MY  ATTAINMENT 
OF 

THE  POLE 


J-:«*rii&i£*i 


DR.FREDERICK-A-GOOK 


BANCROFT 

LIBRARY 

•> 

THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


Press   Edition 

MY  ATTAINMENT 
OF     THE     POLE 


Being  the  Record  of  the  Expedition 
that  First  Reached  the  Boreal  Center, 
1907-1909.  With  the  Final  Sum- 
mary of  the  Polar  Controversy 


By 
DR.   FREDERICK  A.   COOK 

THIRD    PRINTING,    6OTH    THOUSAND 


NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 
MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 

MCMXIII 

By   Special   arrangements   this   edition   is    marketed   by 
The    Polar    Publishing   Co.,   601    Steinway   Hall.   Chicago 


COPTHIOHT    1913 
BT 


G-  (olO 

Da.  FREDERICK  A.  COOK 

C7A-3X 


OTHER  BOOKS  BY  DR.  COOK 
Through  the  First  Antarctic  Night 

A    Narrative    of   the    Belgian    South    Polar    Expedition. 

To  the  Top  of  the  Continent 

Exploration  in  Sub-Arctic  Alaska — The  First  Ascent  of  Mt.  McKinley 

My  Attainment  of  the  Pole 

Edition  de  Luxe 

-Each  of  above  series  will  be  sent  post  paid  for  $5.00.     All  to  one 
address  for  $14.00. 

Address:    THE  POLAR  PUBLISHING  CO. 

601  Steinway  Hall,  Chicago 


BANCROFT 
UBRARY 


To  the  Pathfinders 


To  the  Indian  who  invented  pemmican  and  snowshoes ; 
To  the  Eskimo  who  gave  the  art  of  sled  traveling ; 
To  this  twin  family  of  wild  folk  who  have  no  flag 
Goes  the  first  credit. 

To  the  forgotten  trail  makers  whose  book  of  experience 
has  been  a  guide; 

To  the  fallen  victors  whose  bleached  bones  mark  steps 
in  the  ascent  of  the  ladder  of  latitudes ; 

To  these,  the  pathfinders — past,  present  and  future — 

I  inscribe  the  first  page. 

In  the  ultimate  success  there  is  glory  enough 

To  go  to  the  graves  of  the  dead  and  to  the  heads 
of  the  living. 


THE  PRESENT  STATUS  OF  THE  POLAR 
CONTROVERSY 

DR.  COOK  IS  VINDICATED.    HIS  DISCOVERY  OF  THE  NORTH  POLE 
IS  ENDORSED  BY  THE  EXPLORERS  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD. 

In  placing  Dr.  Cook  on  the  Chautauqua  platform  as  a  lecturer,  we  have 
been  compelled  to  study  the  statements  issued  for  and  against  the  rival  polar 
claims  with  special  reference  to  the  facts  bearing  upon  the  present  status  of  the 
Polar  Controversy. 

Though  the  question  has  been  argued  during  four  years,  we  find  that  it  is 
almost  the  unanimous  opinion  of  arctic  explorers  today,  that  Dr.  Cook  reached 
the  North  Pole  on  April  21,  1909. 

With  officer  Peary's  first  announcement  he  chose  to  force  a  press  cam- 
paign to  deny  Dr.  Cook's  success  and  to  proclaim  himseif  as  the  sole  Polar  Victor. 
Peary  aimed  to  be  retired  as  a  Rear-Admiral  on  a  pension  of  $6,000  per  year. 
This  ambition  was  granted;  but  the  American  Congress  rejected  his  claim  for 
priority  by  eliminating  from  the  pension  bill  the  words  "Discovery  of  the  Pole." 
The  European  geographical  societies,  forced  under  diplomatic  pressure  to  honor 
Peary,  have  also  refused  him  the  title  of  "Discoverer."  By  a  final  verdict  of  the 
American  government  and  of  the  highest  European  authorities,  Peary  is  there- 
fore denied  the  assumption  of  being  the  discoverer  of  the  Pole,  though  his  claim 
as  a  re-discoverer  is  allowed.  The  evasive  inscriptions  on  the  Peary  medals 
prove  this  statement. 

Following  the  acute  excitement  of  the  first  announcement,  it  seemed  to 
be  desirable  to  bring  the  question  to  a  focus  by  submitting  to  some  authoritative 
body  for  decision.  Such  an  institution,  however,  did  not  exist.  Previously, 
explorers  had  been  rated  by  the  slow  process  of  historic  digestion  and  assimila- 
tion of  the  facts  offered,  but  it  was  thought  that  an  academic  examination  would 
meet  the  demands.  Officer  Peary  first  submitted  his  case  to  a  commission  ap- 
pointed by  the  National  Geographical  Society  of  Washington,  D.  C.  This  jury 
promptly  said  that  in  their  "opinion"  Peary  reached  the  Pole  on  April  6,  1909; 
but  a  year  later  in  congress  the  same  men  unwillingly  admitted  that  in  the  Peary 
proofs  there  was  no  positive  proof. 

Dr.  Cook's  data  was  sent  to  a  commission  appointed  by  the  University 
of  Copenhagen.  The  Danes  reported  that  the  material  presented  was  incom- 
plete and  did  not  constitute  positive  proof.  This  verdict,  however,  did  not  carry 
the  interpretation  that  the  Pole  had  not  been  reached.  The  Danes  have  never 
said,  as  they  have  been  quoted  by  the  press,  that  Dr.  Cook  did  not  reach  the 
Pole;  quite  to  the  contrary,  the  University  of  Copenhagen  conferred  the  degree 
of  Ph.  D.  and  the  Royal  Danish  Geographical  Society  gave  a  gold  medal,  both 
in  recognition  of  the  merits  of  the  Polar  effort. 

This  early  examination  was  based  mostly  upon  the  nautical  calculations 
for  position,  and  both  verdicts  when  analyzed  gave  the  version  that  in  such 
observations  there  was  no  positive  proof.  The  Washington  jury  ventured  an 
opinion.  The  Danes  refused  to  give  an  opinion,  but  showed  their  belief  in  Dr. 
Cook's  success  by  conferring  honorary  degrees. 

[A] 


It  is  the  unfair  interpretation  of  the  respective  verdicts  by  the  newspapers 
which  has  precipitated  the  turbulent  air  of  distrust  which  previously  rested  over 
the  entire  Polar  achievement.  All  this,  however,  has  now  been  cleared  by  the 
final  word  of  fifty  of  the  foremost  Polar  explorers  and  scientific  experts. 

In  so  far  as  they  were  able  to  judge  from  all  the  data  presented  in  the 
final  books  of  both  claimants  the  following  experts  have  given  it  as  their  opinion 
that  Dr.  Cook  reached  the  Pole,  and  that  officer  Peary's  similar  report  coming 
later  is  supplementary  proof  of  the  first  victory: 

General  A.  W.  Greely,  U.  S.  A.,  commander  of  the  Lady  FrankKn  Bay 
Expedition,  who  spent  four  years  in  the  region  under  discussion. 

Rear  Admiral  W.  S.  Schley,  U.  S.  N.,  commander  of  the  Greely  Relief 
Expedition. 

Capt.  Otto  Sverdrup,  discoverer  of  the  land  over  which  Dr.  Cook's  route 
was  forced. 

Capt.  J.  E.  Bernier,  commanding  the  Canadian  Arctic  Expeditions. 

Prof.  G.  Frederick  Wright,  author  of  the  "Ice  Age  of  North  America." 

Capt.  E.  B.  Baldwin,  commanding  the  Baldwin-Ziegler  Expedition. 

Prof.  W.  H.  Brewer  for  16  years  president  of  the  Arctic  Club  of  America. 

Prof.  Julius  Payer  of  the  Weyprecht-Payer  Expedition. 

Prof.  L.  L.  Dy«he,  member  of  various  Peary  and  Cook  Expeditions. 

Mr.  Maurice  Connell,  Greely  Expedition,  and  U.  S.  Weather  Bureau. 

Capt.  O.  C.  Hamlet,  U.  S.  A.  Arctic  Revenue  Service. 

Capt.  E.  A.  Haven,  Baldwin-Ziegler  Expedition. 

Mr.  Andrew  J.  Stone,  Explorer  of  North  Coast  of  America. 

Mr.  Dillon  Wallace,  Labrador  Explorer.  , 

Mr.  Edwin  Swift  Balch,  author  of  "The  North  Pole  and  Bradley  Land." 

Captains  Johan  Menander,  B.  S.  Osbon  and  Thomas  F.  Hall. 

Messrs.  Henry  Biederbeck,  Frederick  B.  Wright,  F.  F.  Taylor,  Ralph  H. 
Cairns,  Theodore  Lerner,  M.  Van  Ryssellberghe,  J.  Knowles  Hare,  Chas.  E. 
Rilliet,  Homer  Rogers,  R.  C.  Bates,  E.  C.  Rost,  L.  C.  Bement,  Clarence  Wyc- 
hoff,  Alfred  Church,  Archibald  Dickinson,  Robert  Stein,  J.  S.  Warmbath,  Geo. 
B.  Butland,  Ralph  Shainwald,  Henry  Johnson,  S.  J.  Entrikin,  Clark  Brown, 
W.  F.  Armbruster,  John  R.  Bradley,  Harry  Whitney  and  Rudolph  Franke. 

Drs.  T.  F.  Dedrick,  Middleton  Smith,  J.  G.  Knowlton,  H.  J.  Egbert,  W.  H. 
Axtell,  A.  H.  Cordier  and  Henry  Schwartz. 

Judge  Jules  Leclercq,  and  Prof.  Georges  Lecointe,  Secretary  of  the  Inter- 
national Bureau  of  Polar  Research. 

Thus  endorsed  by  practically  all  Polar  Explorers,  Dr.  Cook's  attainment 
of  the  Pole  and  his  earlier  work  of  discovery  and  exploration  is  farther  established 
by  the  following  honorary  pledges  of  recognition.  (These  are  now  in  the  posses- 
sion of  Dr.  Cook,  the  press  reports  to  the  contrary  being  untrue). 

By  the  King  of  Belgium,  decorated  as  Knight  of  the  Order  of  Leopold. 

By  the  University  of  Copenhagen  in  conferring  the  degree  of  Ph.  D. 

By  the  Royal  Danish  Geographical  Society,  presentation  of  a  gold  medal 

By  the  Arctic  Club  of  America,  presentation  of  a  gold  medal. 

By  the  Royal  Geographical  Society  of  Belgium,  presentation  of  a  gold  medal. 

By  the  Municipality  of  the  City  of  Brussels,  presentation  of  a  gold  medal. 

By  the  Municipality  of  the  City  of  New  York,  with  the  ceremony  of  pre- 
senting the  keys  and  offering  the  freedom  of  the  city. 

Without  denying  officer  Peary's  success,  we  note  that  his  case  rests  upon 
the  opinion  of  three  of  his  official  associates  in  Washington.  Three  men  acting 
for  a  society  financially  interested — three  men  who  have  never  seen  a  piece  of 
Polar  ice  —  have  given  it  as  their  "opinion"  that  Mr.  Peary  (a  year  later  than 
Dr.  Cook)  reached  the  Pole.  By  many  this  was  accepted  as  a  final  verdict  of 
experts  for  Peary.  But  are  such  men  dependable  experts? 

[B] 


Dr.  Cook  now  offers  in  substantiation  of  his  work  the  support  and  the 
final  verdict  of  fifty  of  the  foremost  explorers  and  scientific  experts.  Each  in 
his  own  way  has  during  the  past  four  years  examined  the  polar  problem  and 
pronounced  in  favor  of  Dr.  Cook. 

He  is  therefore  vindicated  of  the  propaganda  of  insinuation  and  distrust 
which  his  enemies  forced,  and  his  success  in  reaching  the  Pole  is  conceded  and 
endorsed  by  his  own  peers. 

In  his  book,  "My  Attainment  of  the  Pole,"  Dr.  Cook  offers  with  thrilling 
vividness  a  most  remarkable  series  of  adventures  in  the  enraptured  wilderness 
at  the  top  of  the  globe.  And  in  his  lectures  he  takes  his  audience  step  by  step 
over  the  haunts  of  northernmost  man  and  beyond  to  the  sparkling  sea  of  death  at 
the  pole.  Above  all  he  leaves  in  the  hearts  of  his  listeners  the  thrills  of  a  fresh 
vigor  and  a  new  inspiration,  which  opens  the  way  for  other  worlds  to  conquer. 
By  his  books  and  by  his  lectures,  Dr.  Cook  seeks  justice  at  the  bar  of  public 
opinion,  and  three  million  people  have  applauded  his  effort  on  the  platform. 
One  hundred  thousand  people  will  read  his  book  during  the  coming  year.  We 
are  inclined  to  agree  with  Capt.  E.  B.  Baldwin  and  other  Arctic  explorers  who  say 
-"Putting  aside  the  academic  and  idle  argument  of  pin-point  accuracy,  the 
North  Pole  has  been  honestly  reached  by  Dr.  Cook,  three  hundred  and  fifty  days 
before  any  one  else  claimed  to  have  been  there." 

May  22,  1913. 

THE  CHAUTAUQUA  MANAGERS'  ASSOCIATION, 

ORCHESTRA  BUILDING,  CHICAGO. 


Chas.  W.  Ferguson,  Pres. 


A.  L.  Flude,  Sec'y. 


PREFACE 

This  narrative  has  been  prepared  as  a  general  out- 
line of  my  conquest  of  the  North  Pole.  In  it  the  scien- 
tific data,  the  observations,  every  phase  of  the  pioneer 
work  with  its  drain  of  human  energy  has  been  presented 
in  its  proper  relation  to  a  strange  cycle  of  events.  The 
camera  has  been  used  whenever  possible  to  illustrate 
the  progress  of  the  expedition  as  well  as  the  wonders 
and  mysteries  of  the  Arctic  wilds.  Herein,  with  due 
after-thought  and  the  better  perspective  afforded  by 
time,  the  rough  field  notes,  the  disconnected  daily  tab- 
ulations and  the  records  of  instrumental  observations, 
every  fact,  every  optical  and  mental  impression,  has 
been  re-examined  and  re-arranged  to  make  a  concise 
record  of  successive  stages  of  progress  to  the  boreal 
center.  If  I  have  thus  worked  out  an  understandable 
panorama  of  our  environment,  then  the  mission  of  this 
book  has  served  its  purpose. 

Much  has  been  said  about,  absolute  geographic 
proof  of  an  explorer's  work.  History  demonstrates  that 
the  book  which  gives  the  final  authoritative  narrative  is 
the  test  of  an  explorer's  claims.  By  it  every  traveler 
has  been  measured.  From  the  time  of  the  discovery  of 
America  to  the  piercing  of  darkest  Africa  and  the  open- 


viii  PREFACE 

ing  of  Thibet,  men  who  have  sought  the  truth  of  the 
claims  of  discovery  have  sought,  not  abstract  figures, 
but  the  continuity  of  the  narrative  in  the  pages  of  the 
traveler's  final  book.  In  such  a  narrative,  after  due 
digestion  and  assimilation,  there  is  to  be  found  either 
the  proof  or  the  disproof  of  the  claims  of  a  discoverer. 

In  such  narratives  as  the  one  herewith  presented, 
subsequent  travelers  and  other  experts,  with  no  other 
interests  to  serve  except  those  of  fair  play,  have  crit- 
ically examined  the  material.  With  the  lapse  of  time 
accordingly,  when  partisanship  feelings  have  been 
merged  in  calm  and  conscientious  judgment,  history  has 
always  finally  pronounced  a  fair  and  equitable  verdict. 

In  a  similar  way  my  claim  of  being  first  to  reach 
the  North  Pole  will  rest  upon  the  data  presented  be- 
tween the  covers  of  this  book. 

In  working  out  the  destiny  of  this  Expedition,  and 
this  book  which  records  its  doings,  I  have  to  acknowl- 
edge my  gratitude  for  the  assistance  of  many  people. 
First  among  those  to  whom  I  am  deeply  indebted  is 
John  R.  Bradley.  By  his  liberal  hand  this  Expedition 
was  given  life,  and  by  his  loyal  support  and  helpfulness 
I  was  enabled  to  get  to  my  base  of  operations  at  Annoa- 
tok.  By  his  liberal  donations  of  food  we  were  enabled  to 
live  comfortably  during  the  first  year.  To  John  R. 
Bradley,  therefore,  belong  the  first  fruits  of  the  Polar 
conquest. 

A  tribute  of  praise  must  be  placed  on  record  for 
Rudolph  Francke.  After  the  yacht  returned,  he  was 
my  sole  civilized  helper  and  companion.  The  faithful 
manner  in  which  he  performed  the  difficult  duties  as- 
signed to  him,  and  his  unruffled  cheerfulness  during  the 


PREFACE  ix 

trying  weeks  of  the  long  night,  reflect  a  large  measure 
of  credit. 

The  band  of  little  people  of  the  Farthest  North 
furnished  without  pay  the  vital  force  and  the  primitive 
ingenuity  without  which  the  quest  of  the  Pole  would  be 
a  hopeless  task.  These  boreal  pigmies  with  golden 
skins,  with  muscles  of  steel,  and  hearts  as  finely  human 
as  those  of  the  highest  order  of  man,  performed  a  task 
that  cannot  be  too  highly  commended.  The  two  boys, 
Ah-we-lah  and  E-tuk-i-shook,  deserve  a  place  on  the  tab- 
let of  fame.  They  followed  me  with  a  perseverance 
which  demonstrates  one  of  the  finest  qualities  of  savage 
life.  They  shared  with  me  the  long  run  of  hardship; 
they  endured  without  complaint  the  unsatisfied  hunger, 
the  unquenched  thirst,  and  the  maddening  isolation,  with 
no  thought  of  reward  except  that  which  comes  from  an 
unselfish  desire  to  follow  one  whom  they  chose  to  regard 
as  a  friend.  If  a  noble  deed  was  ever  accomplished, 
these  boys  did  it,  and  history  should  record  their  heroic 
effort  with  indelible  ink. 

At  the  request  of  Mrs.  Cook,  the  Canadian  Gov- 
ernment sent  its  ship,  the  "Arctic,"  under  Captain  Ber- 
nier,  with  supplementary  supplies  for  me,  to  Etah. 
These  were  left  under  the  charge  of  Mr.  Harry  Whit- 
ney. The  return  to  civilization  was  made  in  comfort, 
by  the  splendid  manner  in  which  this  difficult  problem 
was  carried  out.  To  each  and  all  in  this  combination  I 
am  deeply  indebted. 

With  sweet  memories  of  the  warm  hospitality  of 
Danes  in  Greenland,  I  here  subscribe  my  never-to-He- 
forgotten  appreciation.  I  am  also  indebted  to  the 
Royal  Greenland  Trading  Company  and  to  the  United 


x  PREFACE. 

S.  S.  Company  for  many  favors;  and,  above  all,  am  I 
grateful  to  the  Danes  as  a  nation,  for  the  whole-souled 
demonstrations  of  friendship  and  appreciation  at 
Copenhagen. 

In  the  making  of  this  book,  I  was  relieved  of  much 
routine  editorial  work  by  Mr.  T.  Everett  Harry,  asso- 
ciate editor  of  Hampton's  Magazine,  who  rearranged 
much  of  my  material,  and  by  whose  handling  of  certain 
purely  adventure  matter  a  book  of  better  literary 
workmanship  has  been  made. 

I  am  closing  the  pages  of  this  book  with  a  good  deal 
of  regret,  for,  in  the  effort  to  make  the  price  of  this 
volume  so  low  that  it  can  go  into  every  home,  the  need 
for  brevity  has  dictated  the  number  of  pages.  My  last 
word  to  all — to  friends  and  enemies — is,  if  you  must 
pass  judgment,  study  the  problem  carefully.  You  are 
as  capable  of  forming  a  correct  judgment  as  the  self- 
appointed  experts.  One  of  Peary's  captains  has  said 
"that  he  knew,  but  never  would  admit,  that  Peary 
did  not  reach  the  Pole."  Rear  Admiral  Chester 
has  said  the  same  about  me,  but  he  "admits"  it  in  big, 
flaming  type.  With  due  respect  to  these  men,  in  justice 
to  the  cause,  I  am  bound  to  say  that  these,  and  others  of 
their  kind,  who  necessarily  have  a  blinding  bias,  are  not 
better  able  to  judge  than  the  average  American  citizen. 

If  you  have  read  this  book,  then  read  Mr.  Peary's 
"North  Pole."  Put  the  two  books  side  by  side.  When 
making  comparisons,  remember  that  my  attainment  of 
the  Pole  was  one  year  earlier  than  Mr.  Peary's  claim; 
that  my  narrative  was  written  and  printed  months  be- 
fore that  of  Mr.  Peary;  that  the  Peary  narrative  is  such 
that  Rear  Admiral  Schley  has  said — "After  reading 


PREFACE  xi 

the  published  accounts  daily  and  critically  of  both 
claimants,  I  was  forced  to  the  conclusion  from  their 
striking  similarity  that  each  of  you  was  the  eye-witness 
of  the  other's  success.  Without  collusion,  it  would 
have  been  impossible  to  have  written  accounts  so 
similar." 

This  opinion,  coming  as  it  does  from  one  of  the 
highest  Arctic  and  Naval  authorities,  is  endorsed  by 
practically  all  Arctic  explorers.  Captain  E.  B.  Bald- 
win goes  even  further,  and  proves  my  claim  from  the 
pages  of  Peary's  own  book.  Governor  Brown  of 
Georgia,  after  a  critical  examination  of  the  two  reports, 
says,  "If  it  is  true,  as  Peary  would  like  us  to  believe, 
that  Cook  has  given  us  a  gold  brick,  then  Peary  has 
offered  a  paste  diamond." 

Since  my  account  was  written  and  printed  first, 
the  striking  analogy  apparent  in  the  Peary  pages  either 
proves  my  position  at  the  Pole  or  it  convicts  Peary  of 
using  my  data  to  fill  out  and  impart  verisimilitude  to 
his  own  story  of  a  second  victory. 

Much  against  my  will  I  find  myself  compelled  to 
uncover  the  dark  pages  of  the  selfish  unfairness  of  rival 
interests.  In  doing  so  my  aim  is  not  to  throw  doubt  and 
distrust  on  Mr.  Peary's  success,  but  to  show  his  incentive 
and  his  methods  in  attempting  to  leave  the  sting  of  dis- 
credit upon  me.  I  would  prefer  to  close  my  eye  to  a 
long  series  of  wrong  doings  as  I  have  done  in  the 
passing  years,  but  the  Polar  controversy  cannot  be 
understood  unless  we  get  the  perspective  of  the  man 
who  has  forced  it.  Heretofore  I  have  allowed  others 
to  expend  their  argumentative  ammunition.  The  ques- 
tions which  I  have  raised  are  minor  points.  On  the 


xd 


PREFACE 


main  question  of  Polar  attainment  there  is  not  now 
room  for  doubt.  The  Pole  has  been  honestly  reached— 
the  American  Eagle  has  spread  its  wings  of  glory  over 
the  world's  top.  Whether  there  is  room  for  one  or  two 
or  more  under  those  wings,  I  am  content  to  let  the 
future  decide. 

FREDERICK  A.  COOK. 
The  Waldorf-Astoria, 

New  York,  June  15,  1911. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I    THE  POLAR  FIGHT     ....  1 

II     INTO  THE  BOREAL  WILDS       .         .  Z$ 

THE  YACHT  BRADLEY  LEAVES  GLOUCESTER — INVADES  THE  MAGIC 
WATERS  OF  THE  ARCTIC  SEAS — RECOLLECTIONS  OF  Boraooo 
AMBITIONS — BEYOND  THE  ARCTIC  CIRCLE — THE  WEAVING  OF 
THE  POLAR  SPELL 

III     THE    DRIVING   SPUR   OF    THE    POLAR 

QUEST 4£ 

ON  THE  FRIGID  PATHWAY  OF  THREE  CENTURIES  OF  HEROIC 
MARTYRS — MEETING  THE  STRANGE  PEOPLE  OF  THE  FARTHEST 
NORTH — THE  LIFE  OF  THE  STO»NE  AGE — ON  THE  CHASE  WITH 
THE  ESKIMOS — MANEE  AND  SPARTAN  ESKIMO  COURAGE 

IV     TO  THE  LIMITS  OF  NAVIGATION    .  62 

EXCITING  HUNTS  FOR  GAME  WITH  THE  ESKIMOS — ARRIVAL  AT 
ETAH — SPEEDY  TRIP  TO  ANNOATOK,  THE  WINDY  PLACE,  WHERE 
SUPPLIES  ARE  FOUND  IN  ABUNDANCE — EVERYTHING  AUSPICIOUS 
FOR  DASH  TO  THE  POLE — DETERMINATION  TO  ESSAY  THE  EFFORT 
— BRADLEY  INFORMED — DEBARK  FOR  THE  POLE — THE  YACHT 
RETURNS 

V  PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  POLAR  DASH  73 

AN  ENTIRE  TRIBE  BREATHLESSLY  AND  FEVERISHLY  AT  WORK — 
MAPPING  OUT  THE  POLAR  CAMPAIGN 

VI     THE  CURTAIN  OF  NIGHT  DROPS    .  81 

TRIBE  OF  Two  HUNDRED  AND  FIFTY  NATIVES  BUSILY  BEGIN 
PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  POLAR  DASH — EXCITING  HUNTS  FOR  THB 
UNICORN  AND  OTHER  GAME  FROM  ANNOATOK  TO  CAPE  YORK — 
EVERY  ANIMAL  CAUGHT  BEARING  UPON  THE  SUCCESS  OF  THE 
VENTURE — THE  GRAY-GREEN  GLOOM  OF  TWILIGHT  IN  WHICH 
THE  ESKIMO  WOMEN  COMMUNICATE  WITH  THE  SOULS  OF  THE 
DEAD 

VII    FIRST  WEEK  OF  THE  LONG  NIGHT          99 

HUNTING  IN  THE  ARCTIC  TWILIGHT — PURSUING  BEAR,  CARIBOU 
AND  SMALLER  GAME  IN  SEMI-GLOOM 


xiv  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

VIII     THE     MOONLIGHT     QUEST     OF     THE 

WALRUS 114 

DESPERATE  AND  DANGEROUS  HUNTING,  IN  ORDER  TO  SECURE  ADE- 
QUATE SUPPLIES  FOR  THE  POLAR  DASH — A  THRILLING  AND  AD- 
VENTUROUS RACE  Is  MADE  OVER  FROZEN  SEAS  AND  ICY  MOUN- 
TAINS TO  THE  WALRUS  GROUNDS — TERRIFIC  EXPLOSION  OF  THE  ICE 
ON  WHICH  THE  PARTY  HUNTS — SUCCESS  IN  SECURING  OVER 
SEVEN  SLED-LOADS  OF  BLUBBER  MAKES  THE  POLE  SEEM  NEARER 
— AN  ARCTIC  TRAGEDY 

IX     MIDNIGHT  AND  MID-WINTER         .         130 

THE  EQUIPMENT  AND  ITS  PROBLEMS — NEW  ART  IN  THE  MAKING 
OF  SLEDGES  COMBINING  LIGHTNESS — PROGRESS  OF  THE  PREPARA- 
TIONS— CHRISTMAS  WITH  ITS  GLAD  TIDINGS  AND  AUGURIES  FOR 
SUCCESS  IN  QUEST  OF  THE  POLE 

X  EN  ROUTE  FOR  THE  POLE   .    .    149 

THE  CAMPAIGN  OPENS — LAST  WEEKS  OF  THE  POLAR  NIGHT — 
ADVANCE  PARTIES  SENT  OUT — AWAITING  THE  DAWN 

XI     EXPLORING     A     NEW      PASS      OVER 

ACPOHON          .  162 

FROM  THE  ATLANTIC  WATERS  AT  FLAGLER  BAY  TO  THE  PACIFIC 
WATERS  AT  BAY  FIORD — THE  MECCA  OF  THE  MUSK  Ox — BATTLES 
WITH  THE  BOVINE  MONSTERS  OF  THE  ARCTIC — SUNRISE  AND  THE 
GLORY  OF  SUNSET 

XII     IN  GAME  TRAILS  TO  LAND'S  END   .         176 

SVERDRUP'S  NEW  WONDERLAND — FEASTING  ON  GAME  EN  ROUTE 
TO  SVA°RTEVOEG — FIRST  SHADOW  OBSERVATIONS — FIGHTS  WITH 
WOLVES  AND  BEARS — THE  JOYS  OF  ZERO'S  LOWEST — THRESHOLD 
OF  THE  UNKNOWN 

XIII     THE    TRANS-BOREAL    DASH    BEGINS  194 

BY  FORCED  EFFORTS  AND  THE  USE  OF  AXES  SPEED  is  MADE  OVER 
THE  LAND-ADHERING  PACK  ICE  OF  POLAR  SEA — THE  MOST  DIF- 
FICULT TRAVEL  OF  THE  PROPOSED  JOURNEY  SUCCESSFULLY  AC- 
COMPLISHED— REGRETFUL  PARTING  WITH  THE  ESKIMOS 

XIV     OVER  THE  POLAR  SEA  TO  THE   BIG 

LEAD 208 

WITH  Two  ESKIMO  COMPANIONS,  THE  RACE  POLEWARD  CON- 
TINUES OVER  ROUGH  AND  DIFFICULT  ICE — THE  LAST  LAND  FADES 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  xv 

PAGE 

BEHIND — MIRAGES  LEAP  INTO  BEING  AND  WEAVE  A  MYSTIC 
SPELL — A  SWIRLING  SCENE  OF  MOVING  ICE  AND  FANTASTIC  EF- 
FECTS— STANDING  ON  A  HILL  OF  ICE,  A  BLACK,  WRITHING,  SNAKY 
CUT  APPEARS  IN  THE  ICE  BEYOND — THE  BIG  LEAD — A  NIGHT  OF 
ANXIETY — FIVE  HUNDRED  MILES  ALREADY  COVERED — FOUR  HUN- 
DRED TO  THE  POLE 

XV     CROSSING  MOVING  SEAS  OF  ICE      .         221 

CROSSING  THE  LEAD — THE  THIN  ICE  HEAVES  LIKE  A  SHEET  OF 
RUBBER — CREEPING  FORWARD  CAUTIOUSLY,  THE  Two  DANGEROUS 
MILES  ARE  COVERED — BOUNDING  PROGRESS  MADE  OVER  IMPROVING 
ICE — THE  FIRST  HURRICANE — DOGS  BURIED  AND  FROZEN  INTO 
MASSES  IN  DRIFTS  OF  SNOW — THE  ICE  PARTS  THROUGH  THE  IGLOO 
— WAKING  TO  FIND  ONE'S  SELF  FALLING  INTO  THE  COLD  SEA 

XVI     LAND  DISCOVERED    ....         232 

FIGHTING  PROGRESS  THROUGH  CUTTING  COLD  AND  TERRIFIC 
STORMS — LIFE  BECOMES  A  MONOTONOUS  ROUTINE  OF  HARDSHIP — 
THE  POLE  INSPIRES  WITH  ITS  RESISTLESS  LURE — NEW  LAND  DIS- 
COVERED BEYOND  THE  EIGHTY-FOURTH  PARALLEL — MORE  THAN 
Two  HUNDRED  MILES  FROM  SVARTEVOEG — THE  FIRST  Six  HUN- 
DRED MILES  COVERED 

XVII     BEYOND  THE  RANGE  OF  LIFE         .         248 

WITH  A  NEW  SPRING  TO  WEARY  LEGS  BRADLEY  LAND  is  LEFT 
BEHIND — FEELING  THE  ACHING  VASTNESS  OF  THE  WORLD  BE- 
FORE MAN  WAS  MADE — CURIOUS  GRIMACES  OF  THE  MIDNIGHT 
SUN — SUFFERINGS  INCREASE — BY  PERSISTENT  AND  LABORIOUS 
PROGRESS  ANOTHER  HUNDRED  MILES  is  COVERED 

VIII     OVER  POLAR  SEAS  OF  MYSTERY    .         260 

THE  MADDENING  TORTURES  OF  A  WORLD  WHERE  ICE  WATER 
SEEMS  HOT,  AND  COLD  KNIVES  BURN  ONE'S  HANDS — ANGUISHED 
PROGRESS  ON  THE  LAST  STRETCH  OF  Two  HUNDRED  MILES  OVER 
ANCHORED  LAND  ICE — DAYS  OF  SUFFERING  AND  GLOOM — THE 
TIME  OF  DESPAIR — "!T  Is  WELL  TO  DIE,"  SAYS  AH-WE-LAH; 
"BEYOND  is  IMPOSSIBLE" 

XIX     TO    THE     POLE— LAST     HUNDRED 

MILES        .....  269 

OVER  PLAINS  OF  GOLD  AND  SEAS  OF  PALPITATING  COLOR  THE  DOG 
TEAMS,  WITH  NOSES  DOWN,  TAILS  ERECT,  DASH  SPIRITEDLY 
LIKE  CHARIOT  HORSES — CHANTING  LOVF  SONGS  THE  ESKIMOS 
FOLLOW  WITH  SWINGING  STEP — TIRED  EYES  OPEN  TO  NEW 


xvi  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

GLORY — STEP  BY  STEP,  WITH  THUMPING  HEARTS  THE  EARTH'S 
APEX  Is  NEARED — AT  LAST!  THE  GOAL  Is  REACHED!  THE  STARS 
AND  STRIPES  ARE  FLUNG  TO  THE  FRIGID  BREEZES  OF  THE  NORTH 
POLE  ! 

XX     AT  THE  NORTH  POLE       .         .         .286 

OBSERVATIONS  AT  THE  POLE — METEOROLOGICAL  AND  ASTRONOMI- 
CAL PHENOMENA — SINGULAR  STABILITY  AND  UNIFORMITY  OF  THE 
THERMOMETER  AND  BAROMETER — A  SPOT  WHERE  ONE'S  SHADOW 
Is  THE  SAME  LENGTH  EACH  HOUR  OF  THE  TWENTY-FOUR — 
EIGHT  POLAR  ALTITUDES  OF  THE  SUN 

XXI     THE  RETURN— A  BATTLE  FOR  LIFE  314 

•  TURNED  BACKS  TO  THE  POLE  AND  TO  THE  SUN — THE  DOGS, 
SEEMINGLY  GLAD  AND  SEEMINGLY  SENSIBLE  THAT  THEIR  NOSES 
WERE  POINTED  HOMEWARD,  BARKED  SHRILLY — SUFFERING  FROM 
INTENSE  DEPRESSION — THE  DANGERS  OF  MOVING  ICE,  OF  STORMS 
AND  SLOW  STARVATION — THE  THOUGHT  OF  FIVE  HUNDRED  AND 
TWENTY  MILES  TO  LAND  CAUSES  DESPAIR 

XXII     BACK  TO  LIFE  AND  BACK  TO  LAND  326 

THE  RETURN — DELUDED  BY  DRIFT  AND  FOG — CARRIED  ASTRAY 
OVER  AN  UNSEEN  DEEP — TRAVEL  FOR  TWENTY  DAYS  IN  A  WORLD 
OF  MISTS,  WITH  THE  TERROR  OF  DEATH — AWAKENED  FROM 
SLEEP  BY  A  HEAVENLY  SONG — THE  FIRST  BIRD — FOLLOWING 
THE  WINGED  HARBINGER — WE  REACH  LAND — A  BLEAK,  BARREN 
ISLAND  POSSESSING  THE  CHARM  OF  PARADISE — AFTER  DAYS 
VERGING  ON  STARVATION,  WE  ENJOY  A  FEAST  OF  UNCOOKEP 
GAME 

XXIII  OVERLAND  TO  JONES  SOUND    .         .         341 

HOURS  OF  ICY  TORTURE — A  FRIGID  SUMMER  STORM  IN  THE  BERG- 
DRIVEN  ARCTIC  SEA — A  PERILOUS  DASH  THROUGH  TWISTING 
LANES  OF  OPENING  WATER  IN  A  CANVAS  CANOE — THE  DRIVE  OF 
HUNGER 

XXIV  UNDER  THE  WHIP  OF  FAMINE         .         355 

BY  BOAT  AND  SLEDGE,  OVER  THE  DRIFTING  ICE  AND  STORMY  SEAS 
OF  JONES  SOUND — FROM  ROCK  TO  ROCK  IN  QUEST  OF  FOOD — 
MAKING  NEW  WEAPONS 

XXV     BEAR  FIGHTS  AND  WALRUS  BATTLES  365 

DANGEROUS  ADVENTURES  IN  A  CANVAS  BOAT — ON  THE  VERGE  OF 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  xvii 

PAGE 

STARVATION,  A  MASSIVE  BRUTE,  WEIGHING  THREE  THOUSAND 
POUNDS,  Is  CAPTURED  AFTER  A  FIFTEEN-HOUR  STRUGGLE — 
ROBBED  OF  PRECIOUS  FOOD  BY  HUNGRY  BEARS 

XXVI     BULL  FIGHTS  WITH  THE   MUSK  OX  378 

AN  ANCIENT  CAVE  EXPLORED  FOR  SHELTER — DEATH  BY  STARVA- 
TION AVERTED  BY  HAND-TO-HAND  ENCOUNTERS  WITH  WILD 
ANIMALS 

XXVII     A  NEW  ART  OF  CHASE       ...         393 

THREE  WEEKS  BEFORE  THE  SUNSET  OF  1908 — REVELLING  IN  AN 
EDEN  OF  GAME — PECULIARITIES  OF  ANIMALS  OF  THE  ARCTIC — 
How  NATURE  DICTATES  ANIMAL  COLOR — THE  QUEST  OF  SMALL 
LIFE 

XXVIII     A  HUNDRED  NIGHTS  IN  AN  UNDER- 
GROUND  DEN         ....         406 

LIVING  LIKE  MEN  OF  THE  STONE  AGE — THE  DESOLATION  OF  THE 
LONG  NIGHT — LIFE  ABOUT  CAPE  SPARBO — PREPARING  EQUIP- 
MENT FOR  THE  RETURN  TO  GREENLAND — SUNRISE,  FEBRUARY  11, 
1909 

XXIX     HOMEWARD  WITH  A   HALF   SLEDGE 

AND  HALF-FILLED  STOMACHS    .         425 

THREE  HUNDRED  MILES  THROUGH  STORM  AND  SNOW  AND  UP- 
LIFTED MOUNTAINS  OF  ICE  TROUBLES — DISCOVER  Two  ISLANDS — 
ANNOATOK  Is  REACHED — MEETING  HARRY  WHITNEY — NEWS  OF 
PEARY'S  SEIZURE  OF  SUPPLIES 

XXX  ANNOATOK  TO  UPERNAVIK   .    .    447 

ELEVEN  HUNDRED  MILES  SOUTHWARD  OVER  SEA  AND  LAND — AT 
ETAH — OVERLAND  TO  THE  WALRUS  GROUNDS — ESKIMO  COMEDIES 
AND  TRAGEDIES— A  RECORD  RUN  OVER  MELVILLE  BAY — FIRST 
NEWS  FROM  PASSING  SHIPS — THE  ECLIPSE  OF  THE  SUN — SOUTH- 
WARD BY  STEAMER  GODTHAAB 

XXXI     FROM  GREENLAND  TO  COPENHAGEN  463 

FOREWARNING  OF  THE  POLAR  CONTROVERSY — BANQUET  AT 
EGGEDESMINDE — ON  BOARD  THE  HANS  EGEDE — CABLEGRAMS 
SENT  FROM  LERWICK — THE  OVATION  AT  COPENHAGEN — BE- 
WILDERED AMIDST  THE  GENERAL  ENTHUSIASM — PEARY'S  FIRST 
MESSAGES — EMBARK  ON  OSCAR  II  FOR  NEW  YORK 


xviii  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


XXXII     COPENHAGEN     TO     THE     UNITED 

STATES    .  476 

ACROSS  THE  ATLANTIC — RECEPTION  IK  NEW  YORK — BEWILDERING 
CYCLONE  OF  EVENTS — INSIDE  NEWS  OF  THE  PEARY  ATTACK — 
How  THE  WEB  OF  SHAME  WAS  WOVEN 

XXXIII  THE    KEY    TO    THE    CONTROVERSY     507 

PEARY  AND  His  PAST — His  DEALING  WITH  RIVAL  EXPLORERS — 
THE  DEATH  OF  ASTRUP — THE  THEFT  OF  THE  "GREAT  IRON 
STONE,"  THE  NATIVES'  SOLE  SOURCE  OF  IRON 

XXXIV  THE  MT.  McKINLEY  BRIBERY  .         .         521 

THE  BRIBED,  FAKED  AND  FORGED  NEWS  ITEMS — THE  PRO-PEARY 
MONEY  POWERS  ENCOURAGE  PERJURY — MT.  McKiNLEY  HONESTLY 
CLIMBED — How,  FOR  PEARY,  A  SIMILAR  PEAK  WAS  FAKED 

XXXV     THE  DUNKLE-LOOSE  FORGERY       .         535 

ITS  PRO-PEARY  MAKING 

XXXVI     HOW  A  GEOGRAPHIC  SOCIETY  PROS- 
TITUTED ITS  NAME      ...         541 

THE  WASHINGTON  VERDICT — THE   COPENHAGEN  VERDICT 

RETROSPECT 557 

THE  PRESENT  STATUS  OF  THE  POLAR  CONTROVERSY  (Preceding  Preface)         .  (a) 
Dr.  Cook  Vindicated— His  Discovery  of  the  North  Pole  Endorsed  by 
the  Explorers  of  all  the  World. 

THE  PEARY-PARKER-BROWN  HUMBUG  UP  To  DATE  (To  Finish  Page)   .         .  534 
Parker  contradicts  former  Statement — Says  he  climbed  Mt.  McKinley 
by  Northeast  Ridge.— The  Ridge  used  by  Dr.  Cook. 

VERDICT  OF  THE  GEOGRAPHIC  HISTORIAN  (By  Edwin  Swift  Balch)         .         .  595 
Dr.  Cook's  Record  is  Accurate — It  is  Certified — It  is  Corroborated — 
He  is  the  Discoverer  of  the  North  Pole. 

A  REQUEST  FOR  A  NATIONAL  INVESTIGATION  (By  Dr.  Frederick  A.  Cook)       .  600 
Nation  should  decide — Congress  Should  Investigate  Rival  Claims — 
Letter  to  the  President. 

CAN  THE  GOVERNMENT  ESCAPE  THE  RESPONSIBILITY  (By  Fred  High,  Editor 

of  the  Platform) 605 

Cook  Should  Have  a  Fair  Deal — An  Unbiased  Comparison — Letters  to 
and  from  Prominent  Men. 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

FREDERICK  A.  COOK        .....        Frontispiece 

FACING 

PAGE 

RUDOLPH  FRANCKE  IN  ARCTIC  COSTUME     .         .         .         .12 
MIDNIGHT — "  A  PANORAMA  OF  BLACK  LACQUER  AND  SILVER  "     13 

ON  THE  CHASE  FOR  BEAR — THE  Box-HousE  AT  ANNOATOK 
AND  ITS  WINTER  ENVIRONMENT  .  .  .  .76 

MAN'S  PREY  OF  THE  ARCTIC  SEA — WALRUS  ASLEEP  .         .     77 
THE  HELPERS — NORTHERNMOST  MAN  AND  His  WIFE  .         .108 

A  MECCA  OF  MUSK  Ox  ALONG  EUREKA  SOUND — A  NATIVE 
HELPER — AH-WE-LAH'S  PROSPECTIVE  WIFE  .  .  109 

THE  CAPTURE  OF  A  BEAR — ROUNDING  UP,A  HERD  OF  MUSK 
OXEN 140 

SVARTEVOEG — CAMPING  500  MlLES  FROM  THE  POLE     .  .   141 

"THE  IGLOO  BUILT,  WE  PREPARE  FOR  OUR  DAILY  CAMP"  .   172 

CAMPING  TO  EAT  AND  TAKE  OBSERVATIONS — ON  AGAIN  .  173 

DASHING  FORWARD  EN  ROUTE  TO  THE  POLE       .         .  .  204 

DEPARTURE  OF  SUPPORTING  PARTY — A  BREATHING  SPELL — 
POLEWARD  ........  205 

BRADLEY  LAND  DISCOVERED — SUBMERGED  ISLAND  OF  POLAR 
SEA — GOING  BEYOND  THE  BOUNDS  OF  LIFE  .  .  236 

SWIFT  PROGRESS  OVER  SMOOTH  ICE — BUILDING  AN  IGLOO 
— A  LIFELESS  WORLD  OF  COLD  AND  ICE  ..  .  .  237 

*Too  WEARY  TO  BUILD  IGLOOS,  WE  USED  THE  SILK  TENT  " 
"ACROSS  SEAS  OF  CRYSTAL  GLORY  TO  THE  BOREAL 
CENTRE" 268 

MENDING  NEAR  THE  POLE 269 

FIRST  CAMP  AT  THE  POLE,  APRIL  21,  1908  .  .  300 


xx  LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING 

PAGE 


AT  THE  POLE — "WE  WERE  THE  ONLY  PULSATING  CREA- 
TURES IN  A  DEAD  WORLD  OF  ICE"  ....  301 

4<WiTH  EAGER  EYES  WE  SEARCHED  THE  DUSKY  PLAINS  OF 
CRYSTAL,  BUT  THERE  WAS  No  LAND,  No  LIFE,  To 
RELIEVE  THE  PURPLE  RUN  OF  DEATH"  .  .  .  332 

RECORD  LEFT  IN  BRASS  TUBE  AT  NORTH  POLE     .         .         .  333 

OBSERVATION  DETERMINING  THE  POLE — PHOTOGRAPH  FROM 

ORIGINAL  NOTE         .         .         .         .         .         .         .  364 

BACK  TO  LAND  AND  BACK  TO  LIFE — AWAKENED  BY  A 
WINGED  HARBINGER  ......  365 

E-TuK-I-SnooK  WAITING  FOR  A  SEAL  AT  A  BLOW  HOLE       .  396 

TOWARD  CAPE  SPARBO  IN  CANVAS  BOAT — WALRUS — (PRIZE 

OF  15-HOUR  BATTLE)  4,000  LBS.  OF  MEAT  AND  FAT      .  397 

PUNCTURED  CANVAS  BOAT  IN  WHICH  WE  PADDLED  1,000 
MILES — FAMINE  DAYS,  WHEN  ONLY  STRAY  BIRDS  PRE- 
VENTED STARVATION — DEN  IN  WHICH  WE  SPENT  100 
DOUBLE  NIGHTS  .......  428 

BULL  FIGHTS  WITH  THE  MUSK  Ox  ABOUT  CAPE  SPARBO        .  429 

SAVED  FROM  STARVATION — THE  RESULT  OF  ONE  OF  OUR 

LAST  CARTRIDGES      .......  460 

"MILES  AND  MILES  OF  DESOLATION" — HOMEWARD  BOUND  461 
GOVERNOR  KRAUL  IN  His  STUDY — ARRIVAL  AT  UPERNAVIK  492 

POLAR  TRAGEDY — A  DESERTED  CHILD  OF  THE  SULTAN  OF  THE 
NORTH  AND  ITS  MOTHER  .  .  493 


My  Attainment  of  the  Pole 

i. 

THE  POLAR  FIGHT 

On  April  21,  1908,  I  reached  a  spot  on  the  silver- 
shining  desert  of  boreal  ice  whereat  a  wild  wave  of  joy 
filled  my  heart.  I  can  remember  the  scene  distinctly — 
it  will  remain  one  of  those  comparatively  few  mental 
pictures  which  are  photographed  with  a  terribly  vivid 
distinctness  of  detail,  because  of  their  emotional  effect, 
during  everyone's  existence,  and  which  reassert  them- 
selves in  the  brain  like  lightning  flashes  in  stresses  of 
intense  emotion,  in  dreams,  in  the  delirium  of  sickness, 
and  possibly  in  the  hour  of  death. 

I  can  see  the  sun  lying  low  above  the  horizon, 
which  glittered  here  and  there  in  shafts  of  light  like 
the  tip  of  a  long,  circular,  silver  blade.  The  globe  of 
fire,  veiled  occasionally  by  purplish,  silver-shot  mists, 
was  tinged  with  a  faint,  burning  lilac.  Through  open- 
ing cracks  in  the  constantly  moving  field  of  ice,  cold 
strata  of  air  rose,  deflecting  the  sun's  rays  in  every 
direction,  and  changing  the  vision  of  distant  ice  irregu- 
larities with  a  deceptive  perspective,  as  an  oar  blade 
seen  in  the  depth  of  still  water. 

Huge  phantom-shapes  took  form  about  me;  they 
were  nebulous,  their  color  purplish.  About  the  horizon 


2  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

moved  what  my  imagination  pictured  as  the  ghosts 
of  dead  armies — strange,  gigantic,  wraith-like  shapes 
whose  heads  rose  above  the  horizon  as  the  heads  of  a 
giant  army  appearing  over  the  summits  of  a  far-away 
mountain.  They  moved  forward,  retreated,  diminished 
in  size,  and  titanically  reappeared  again.  Above  them, 
in  the  purple  mists  and  darker  clouds,  shifted  scintil- 
lantly  waving  flashes  of  light,  orange  and  crimson,  the 
ghosts  of  their  earthly  battle  banners,  wind-tossed, 
golden  and  bloodstained. 

I  stood  gazing  with  wonder,  half-appalled,  for- 
getting that  these  were  mirages  produced  by  cold  air 
and  deflected  light  rays,  and  feeling  only  as  though  I 
were  beholding  some  vague  revelation  of  victorious 
hosts,  beings  of  that  other  world  which  in  olden  times,  it 
is  said,  were  conjured  at  Endor.  It  seemed  fitting  that 
they  should  march  and  remarch  about  me;  that  the  low 
beating  of  the  wind  should  suddenly  swell  into  throb- 
bing martial  music.  For  that  moment  I  was  intoxi- 
cated. I  stood  alone,  apart  from  my  two  Eskimo  com- 
panions, a  shifting  waste  of  purple  ice  on  every  side, 
alone  in  a  dead  world — a  world  of  angry  winds,  eternal 
cold,  and  desolate  for  hundreds  of  miles  in  every  direc- 
tion as  the  planet  before  man  was  made. 

I  felt  in  my  heart  the  thrill  which  any  man  must 
feel  when  an  almost  impossible  but  dearly  desired  work 
is  attained — the  thrill  of  accomplishment  with  which  a 
poet  must  regard  his  greatest  masterpiece,  which  a 
sculptor  must  feel  when  he  puts  the  finishing  touch  to 
inanimate  matter  wherein  he  has  expressed  consum- 
mately a  living  thought,  which  a  conqueror  must  feel 
when  he  has  mastered  a  formidable  alien  army.  Stand- 


THE    QUESTION    OF    PIN-POINT  ACCURACY       3 

ing  on  this  spot,  I  felt  that  I,  a  human  being,  with  all 
of  humanity's  frailties,  had  conquered  cold,  evaded 
famine,  endured  an- inhuman  battling  with  a  rigorous, 
infuriated  Nature  in  a  soul-racking,  body-sapping 
journey  such  as  no  man  perhaps  had  ever  made.  I 
had  proved  myself  to  myself,  with  no  thought  at  the 
time  of  any  worldy  applause.  Only  the  ghosts  about 
me,  which  my  dazzled  imagination  evoked,  celebrated 
the  glorious  thing  with  me — a  thing  in  which  no  human 
being  could  have  shared.  Over  and  over  again  I  re- 
peated to  myself  that  I  had  reached  the  North  Pole, 
and  the  thought  thrilled  through  my  nerves  and  veins 
like  the  shivering  sound  of  silver  bells. 

That  was  my  hour  of  victory.  It  was  the  climac- 
teric hour  of  my  life.  The  vision  and  the  thrill,  despite 
all  that  has  passed  since  then,  remain,  and  will  remain 
with  me  as  long  as  life  lasts,  as  the  vision  and  the  thrill 
of  an  honest,  actual  accomplishment. 

That  I  stood  at  the  time  on  the  very  pivotal  pin- 
point of  the  earth  I  do  not  and  never  did  claim;  I  may 
have,  I  may  not.  In  that  moving  world  of  ice,  of  con- 
stantly rising  mists,  with  a  low-lying  sun  whose  rays 
are  always  deflected,  such  an  ascertainment  of  actual 
position,  even  with  instruments  in  the  best  workable 
condition,  is,  as  all  scientists  will  agree,  impossible. 
That  I  reached  the  North  Pole  approximately,  and 
ascertained  my  location  as  accurately,  as  painstakingly, 
as  the  terrestrial  and  celestial  conditions  and  the  best  in- 
struments would  allow;  that  I  thrilled  with  victory, 
and  made  my  claim  on  as  honest,  as  careful,  as  scientific 
a  basis  of  observations  and  calculations  as  any  human 
being  could,  I  do  emphatically  assert.  That  any  man, 


4  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

in  reaching  this  region,  could  do  more  than  I  did  to 
ascertain  definitely  the  mathematical  Pole,  and  that  any 
more  voluminous  display  of  figures  could  substantiate 
a  claim  of  greater  accuracy,  I  do  deny.  I  believe  still 
what  I  told  the  world  when  I  returned,  that  I  am  the 
first  white  man  to  reach  thafe  spot  known  as  the  North 
Pole  as  far  as  it  is,  or  ever  will  be,  humanly  possible  to 
ascertain  the  location  of  that  spot. 

Few  men  in  all  history,  I  am  inclined  to  believe, 
have  ever  been  made  the  subject  of  such  vicious  at- 
tacks, of  such  malevolent  assailing  of  character,  of  such 
a  series  of  perjured  and  forged  charges,  of  such  a  wide- 
spread and  relentless  press  persecution,  as  I;  and  few 
men,  I  feel  sure,  have  ever  been  made  to  suffer  so  bit- 
terly and  so  inexpressibly  as  I  because  of  the  assertion 
of  my  achievement.  So  persistent,  so  egregious,  so 
overwhelming  were  the  attacks  made  upon  me  that  for 
a  time  my  spirit  was  broken,  and  in  the  bitterness  of  my 
soul  I  even  felt  desirous  of  disappearing  to  some  remote 
corner  of  the  earth,  to  be  forgotten.  I  knew  that  envy 
was  the  incentive  to  all  the  unkind  abuses  heaped  upon 
me,  and  I  knew  also  that  in  due  time,  when  the  public 
agitation  subsided  and  a  better  perspective  followed, 
the  justice  of  my  claim  would  force  itself  to  the  inevita- 
ble light  of  truth. 

With  this  confidence  in  the  future,  I  withdrew  from 
the  envious,  money-waged  strife  to  the  calm  and  rest- 
fulness  of  my  own  family  circle.  The  campaign  of  in- 
famy raged  and  spent  its  force.  The  press  lined  up 
with 'this  dishonest  movement  by  printing  bribed,  faked 
and  forged  news  items,  deliberately  manufactured  by 
my  enemies  to  feed  a  newspaper  hunger  for  sensation. 


THE  UNGRACIOUS  POLAR  CONTROVERSY        5 

In  going  away  for  a  rest  it  did  not  seem  prudent  to 
take  the  press  into  my  confidence,  a  course  which  re- 
sulted in  the  mean  slurs  that  I  had  abandoned  my  cause. 
This  again  was  used  by  my  enemies  to  blacken  my  char- 
acter. In  reality,  I  had  tried  to  keep  the  ungracious 
Polar  controversy  within  the  bounds  of  decent,  gentle- 
manly conduct;  but  indecency  had  become  the  keynote, 
and  against  this,  mild  methods  served  no  good  purpose. 
I  preferred,  therefore,  to  go  away  and  allow  the 
atmosphere  to  clear  of  the  stench  stirred  up  by  rival 
interest;  but  while  I  was  away,  my  enemies  were 
watched,  and  I  am  here  now  to  uncover  the  darkest  cam- 
paign of  bribery  and  conspiracy  ever  forged  in  a  strife 
for  honor. 

Now  that  my  disappointment,  my  bitterness  has 
passed,  that  my  hurt  has  partly  healed,  I  have  deter- 
mined to  tell  the  whole  truth  about  myself,  about  the 
charges  made  against  me,  and  about  those  by  whom  the 
charges  were  made.  Herein,  FOR  THE  FIRST 
TIME,  I  will  tell  how  and  why  I  believed  I  reached  the 
North  Pole,  and  give  fully  the  record  upon  which  this 
claim  is  based.  Only  upon  such  a  complete  account  of 
day-by-day  traveling  and  such  observations,  can  any 
claim  rest. 

Despite  the  hullabaloo  of  voluminous  so-called 
proofs  offered  by  a  rival,  I  am  certain  that  the  un- 
prejudiced reader  will  herein  find  as  complete  a  story, 
and  as  valuable  figures  as  those  ever  offered  by  anyone 
for  any  such  achievement  in  exploration  as  mine. 
Herein,  for  the  first  time,  shall  I  answer  in  toto  all 
charges  made  against  me,  and  this  because  the  entire 
truth  concerning  these  same  charges  I  have  not  sue- 


6  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

ceeded  in  giving  the  world  through  other  channels.  Be- 
cause of  the  power  of  those  who  arrayed  themselves 
against  me,  I  found  the  columns  of  the  press  closed  to 
much  that  I  wished  to  say;  articles  which  I  wrote  for 
publication  underwent  editorial  excision,  and  absolutely 
necessary  explanations,  which  in  themselves  attacked 
my  assailants,  were  eliminated. 

Only  by  reading  my  own  story,  as  fully  set  down 
herein,  can  anyone  judge  of  the  relative  value  of  my 
claim  and  that  of  my  rival  claimant;  only  by  so  doing 
can  anyone  get  at  the  truth  of  the  plot  made  to  discredit 
me ;  only  by  doing  so  can  one  learn  the  reason  for  all  of 
my  actions,  for  my  failure  to  meet  charges  at  the  time 
they  were  made,  for  my  disappearing  at  a  time  when 
such  action  was  unfairly  made  to  confirm  the  worst 
charges  of  my  detractors.  That  I  have  been  too  char- 
itable with  those  who  attempted  to  steal  the  justly 
deserved  honors  of  my  achievement,  I  am  now  con- 
vinced; when  desirable,  I  shall  now,  having  felt  the 
smarting  sting  of  the  world's  whip,  and  in  order  to 
justify  myself,  use  the  knife.  I  shall  tell  the  truth 
even  though  it  hurts.  I  have  not  been  spared,  and  I 
shall  spare  no  one  in  telling  the  unadorned  and  un- 
pleasant story  of  a  man  who  has  been  bitterly 
wronged,  whose  character  has  been  assailed  by  bought 
and  perjured  affidavits,  whose  life  before  he  returned 
from  the  famine-land  of  ice  and  cold — the  world  of  his 
conquest — was  endangered,  designedly  or  not,  by  a 
dishonest  appropriation  of  food  supplies  by  one  who 
afterwards  endeavored  to  steal  from  him  his  honor, 
which  is  more  dear  than  life. 

To  be  doubted,  and  to  have  one's  honesty  assailed, 


HOW   OTHER   EXPLORERS   WERE   DOUBTED     7 

has  been  the  experience  of  many  explorers  throughout 
history.  The  discoverer  of  our  own  continent,  Chris- 
topher Columbus,  was  thrown  into  prison,  and  another, 
Amerigo  Vespucci,  was  given  the  honor,  his  name  to 
this  day  marking  the  land  which  was  reached  only 
through  the  intrepidity  and  single-hearted,  single-sus- 
tained confidence  of  a  man  whose  vision  his  own  people 
doubted.  Even  in  my  own  time  have  explorers  been 
assailed,  among  them  Stanley,  whose  name  for  a  time 
was  shrouded  with  suspicion,  and  others  who  since  have 
joined  the  ranks  of  my  assailants.  Unfortunately,  in 
such  cases  the  matter  of  proof  and  the  reliability  of  any 
claim,  basicly,  must  rest  entirely  upon  the  intangible 
evidence  of  a  man's  own  word;  there  can  be  no  such 
thing  as  a  palpable  and  indubitable  proof.  And  in  the 
case  when  a  man's  good  faith  is  aspersed  and  his  char- 
acter assailed,  the  world's  decision  must  rest  either  upon 
his  own  word  or  that  of  his  detractors. 

Returning  from  the  North,  exhausted  both  in  body 
and  brain  by  a  savage  and  excruciating  struggle  against 
famine  and  cold,  yet  thrilling  with  the  glorious  con- 
viction of  a  personal  attainment,  I  was  tossed  to  the 
zenith  of  worldly  honor  on  a  wave  of  enthusiasm,  a 
world-madness,  which  startled  and  bewildered  me.  In 
that  swift,  sudden,  lightning-flash  ascension  to  glory, 
which  I  had  not  expected,  and  in  which  I  was  as  a  bit  of 
helpless  drift  in  the  thundering  tossing  of  an  ocean 
storm,  I  was  decorated  with  unasked-for  honors,  the 
laudations  of  the  press  of  the  world  rang  in  my  ears,  the 
most  notable  of  living  men  hailed  me  as  one  great  among 
them.  I  found  myself  the  unwilling  and  uncomfort- 
able guest  of  princes,  and  I  was  led  forward  to  receive 
the  gracious  hand  of  a  King. 


8  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Returning  to  my  own  country,  still  marveling  that 
such  honors  should  be  given  because  I  had  accomplished 
what  seemed,  and  still  seems,  a  merely  personal  achieve- 
ment, and  of  little  importance  to  anyone  save  to  him 
who  throbs  with  the  gratification  of  a  personal  success, 
I  was  greeted  with  mad  cheers  and  hooting  whistles, 
with  bursting  guns  and  blaring  bands.  I  was  led 
through  streets  filled  with  applauding  men  and  singing 
children  and  arched  with  triumphal  flowers.  In  a  dizzy 
whirl  about  the  country — which  now  seems  like  a  deliri- 
ous dream — I  experienced  what  I  am  told  was  an  ova- 
tion unparalleled  of  its  kind. 

Coincident  with  my  return  to  civilization,  and  while 
the  world  was  ringing  with  congratulations,  there  came 
stinging  through  the  cold  air  from  the  North,  by  wire- 
less electric  flashes,  word  from  Mr.  Peary  that  he  had 
reached  the  North  Pole  and  that,  in  asserting  such  a 
claim  myself,  I  was  a  liar.  I  did  not  then  doubt  the  good 
faith  of  Peary's  claim;  having  reached  the  boreal  center 
myself,  under  extremely  favorable  weather  conditions,  I 
felt  that  he,  with  everything  in  his  favor,  could  do  as 
much  a  year  later,  as  he  claimed.  I  replied  with  all  can- 
dor what  I  felt,  that  there  was  glory  enough  for  two. 
But  I  did,  of  course,  feel  the  sting  of  my  rival's  unwar- 
ranted and  virulent  attacks.  In  the  stress  of  any  great 
crisis,  the  average  human  mind  is  apt  to  be  carried  away 
by  unwise  impulses. 

Following  Mr.  Peary's  return,  I  found  myself  the 
object  of  a  campaign  to  discredit  me  in  which,  I  believe, 
as  an  explorer,  I  stand  the  most  shamefully  abused  man 
in  the  history  of  exploration.  Deliberately  planned, 
inspired  at  first,  and  at  first  directed,  by  Mr.  Peary  from 


WEAVING   THE   FALSE   WEB    OF    SHAME         9 

the  wireless  stations  of  Labrador,  this  campaign 
was  consistently  and  persistently  worked  out  by  a 
powerful  and  affluent  organization,  with  unlimited 
money  at  its  command,  which  has  had  as  its  allies  dis- 
honest pseudo-scientists,  financially  and  otherwise  in- 
terested in  the  success  of  Mr.  Peary's  expedition.  With 
a  chain  of  powerful  newspapers,  a  financial  backer  of 
Peary  led  a  campaign  to  destroy  confidence  in  me.  I 
found  myself  in  due  time,  before  I  realized  the  import- 
ance of  underhand  attacks,  in  a  quandary  which  baffled 
and  bewildered  me.  Without  any  organization  behind 
me,  without  any  wires  to  pull,  without,  at  the  time,  any 
appreciable  amount  of  money  for  defence,  I  felt  what 
anyone  who  is  not  superhuman  would  have  felt,  a  sick- 
ening sense  of  helplessness,  a  disgust  at  the  human 
duplicity  which  permitted  such  things,  a  sense  of  the 
futility  of  the  very  thing  I  had  done  and  its  little  worth 
compared  to  the  web  of  shame  my  enemies  were  en- 
deavoring to  weave  about  me. 

One  of  the  remarkable  things  about  modern  jour- 
nalism is  that,  by  persistent  repetition,  it  can  create  as  a 
fact  in  the  public  mind  a  thing  which  is  purely  imma- 
terial or  untrue.  Taking  the  cue  from  Peary,  there  was 
at  the  beginning  a  widespread  and  unprecedented  call 
for  "proofs,"  which  in  some  vague  way  were  to  consist 
of  unreduced  reckonings.  Mr.  Peary  had  his  own — he 
had  buried  part  of  mine.  I  did  not  at  the  time  instantly 
produce  these  vague  and  obscure  proofs,  knowing,  as  all 
scientists  know,  that  figures  must  inevitably  be  inade- 
quate and  that  any  convincing  proof  that  can  exist  is  to 
be  found  only  in  the  narrative  account  of  such  a  quest.  I 
did  not  appreciate  that  in  the  public  mind,  because  of 


10  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

the  newspapers'  criticisms,  there  was  growing  a  demand 
for  this  vague  something.  For  this  reason,  I  did  not 
consider  an  explanation  of  the  absurdity  of  this  exag- 
gerated position  necessary. 

Nor  did  I  appreciate  the  relative  effect  of  the 
National  Geographic  Society's  "acceptance"  of  Mr. 
Peary's  so-called  "proofs"  while  mine  were  not  forth- 
coming. I  did  not  know  at  the  time,  what  has  since  been 
brought  out  in  the  testimony  given  before  the  Naval 
Committee  in  Washington,  that  the  National  Geo- 
graphic Society's  verdict  was  based  upon  an  indif- 
ferent examination  of  worthless  observations  and  a  few 
seconds'  casual  observation  of  Mr.  Peary's  instruments 
by  several  members  of  the  Society  in  the  Pennsylvania 
Railroad  Station  at  Washington.  With  many  lecture 
engagements,  I  considered  that  I  was  right  in  doing 
what  every  other  explorer,  including  Mr.  Peary  him- 
self, had  done  before  me;  that  is,  to  fulfill  my  lec- 
ture and  immediate  literary  opportunities  wiiile  there 
was  a  great  public  interest  aroused,  and  to  offer  a  nar- 
rative of  greater  length,  with  field  observations  and 
extensive  scientific  data,  later. 

Following  the  exaggerated  call  for  proofs,  there 
began  a  series  of  persistently  planned  attacks.  So 
petty  and  insignificant  did  many  of  them  seem  to  me 
that  I  gave  them  little  thought.  My  speed  limits  were 
questioned,  this  charge  being  dropped  when  it  was  found 
that  Mr.  Peary's  had  exceeded  mine.  The  use  by  the 
newspaper  running  my  narrative  story  of  photographs 
of  Arctic  scenes — which  never  change  in  character — 
that  had  been  taken  by  me  on  previous  trips,  was  held 
up  as  visible  evidence  that  I  was  a  faker !  Errors  which 


DISTORTED   ESKIMO   STATEMENTS  11 

crept  into  my  newspaper  account  because  of  hasty  prep- 
aration, and  which  were  not  corrected  because  there 
was  no  time  to  read  proofs,  were  eagerly  seized  upon, 
and  long,  abstruse  and  impressive  mathematical  dis- 
sertations were  made  on  these  to  prove  how  unscrupu- 
lous and  unreliable  I  was. 

The  photograph  of  the  flag  at  the  Pole  was  put 
forth  by  one  of  Mr.  Peary's  friends  to  prove  on  prima 
facie  evidence  that  I  had  faked.  Inasmuch  as  the  origi- 
nal negative  was  vague  because  of  the  non-actinic  light 
in  the  North,  the  newspaper  photographers  retouched 
the  print  and  painted  on  it  a  shadow  as  being  cast  from 
the  flag  and  snow  igloos.  This  shadow  was  seized  upon 
avidly,  and  after  long  and  learned  calculations,  was 
cited  as  showing  that  the  picture  was  taken  some  five 
hundred  miles  from  the  Pole. 

A  formidable  appearing  statement,  signed  by  vari- 
ous members  of  his  expedition,  and  copyrighted  by  the 
clique  of  honor-blind  boosters,  was  issued  by  Mr. 
Peary.  In  this  he  gave  statements  of  my  two  Eskimo 
companions  to  the  effect  that  I  had  not  gotten  out  of 
sight  of  land  for  more  than  one  or  two  "sleeps"  on  my 
trip.  I  knew  that  I  had  encouraged  the  delusion  of  my 
Eskimos  that  the  mirages  and  low-lying  clouds  which 
appeared  almost  daily  were  signs  of  land.  In  their  ig- 
norance and  their  eagerness  to  be  near  land,  they  be- 
lieved this,  and  by  this  innocent  deception  I  prevented 
the  panic  which  seizes  every  Arctic  savage  when  he  finds 
himself  upon  the  circumpolar  sea  out  of  sight  of  land.  I 
have  since  learned  that  Mr.  Peary's  Eskimos  became 
panic-stricken  near  the  Big  Lead  on  his  last  journey 
and  that  it  was  only  by  the  life-threatening  announce- 


12  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

ment  to  them  of  his  determination  to  leave  them  alone 
on  the  ice  (to  get  back  to  land  as  best  they  might  or 
starve  to  death)  that  he  compelled  them  to  accompany 
him. 

In  any  case,  I  did  not  consider  as  important  any 
testimony  of  the  Eskimos  which  Mr.  Peary  might  cite, 
knowing  as  well  as  he  did  that  one  can  get  any  sort  of 
desired  reply  from  these  natives  by  certain  adroit  ques- 
tioning, and  knowing  also  that  the  alleged  route  on  his 
map  which  he  said  they  drew  was  valueless,  inasmuch  as 
an  Eskimo  out  of  sight  of  land  and  in  an  unfamiliar 
region  has  no  sense  of  location.  I  felt  the  whole  state- 
ment to  be  what  it  was,  a  trumped-up  document  in 
which  my  helpers,  perhaps  unwittingly,  had  been 
adroitly  led  to  affirm  what  Mr.  Peary  by  Jesuitical  and 
equivocal  questioning  planned  to  have  them  say,  and 
that  it  was  therefore  unworthy  of  a  reply. 

I  had  left  my  instruments  and  part  of  the  unre- 
duced reckonings  with  Mr.  Harry  Whitney,  a  fact 
which  Mr.  Whitney  himself  confirmed  in  published 
press  interviews  when  he  first  arrived — in  the  heat  of  the 
controversy  and  after  I  left  Copenhagen — in  Sidney. 
When  interviews  came  from  Mr.  Peary  insinuating 
that  I  had  left  no  instruments  in  the  North,  this 
becoming  a  definite  charge  which  was  taken  up 
with  great  hue  and  cry,  I  bitterly  felt  this  to  be 
a  deliberate  untruth  on  Mr.  Peary's  part.  I  have  since 
learned  that  one  of  Mr.  Peary's  officers  cross-questioned 
my  Eskimos,  and  that  by  showing  them  Mr.  Peary's 
own  instruments  he  discovered  just  what  instruments  I 
had  had  with  me  on  my  trip,  and  that  by  describing  the 
method  of  using  these  instruments  to  E-tuk-i-shook  and 


ItrnOLPH    FHANCKK    IN    ARCTIC    COSTUME 


MIDNIGHT — "A  PANORAMA  OF  BLACK  LACQFKR  AND  SILVER.' 


THE    PRO-PEARY   BRIBERY  15 

Ah-we-lah,  Bartlett  learned  from  them  that  I  did  take 
observations.  This  information  he  conveyed  to  Mr, 
Peary  before  his  expedition  left  Etah  for  America,  and 
this  knowledge  Mr.  Peary  and  his  party,  deliberately 
and  with  malicious  intent,  concealed  on  their  return. 
At  the  time  I  had  no  means  of  refuting  this  insinuation ; 
it  was  simply  my  word  or  Mr.  Peary's. 

I  had  no  extraordinary  proofs  to  offer,  but,  such 
as  they  were,  I  now  know,  by  comparison  with  the 
published  reports  of  Mr.  Peary  himself,  they  were  as 
good  as  any  offered  by  anyone.  I  was  perhaps  un- 
fortunate in  not  having,  as  Mr.  Peary  had,  a  confederate 
body  of  financially  interested  friends  to  back  me  up,  as 
was  the  National  Geographic  Society. 

Not  satisfied  with  unjustly  attacking  my  claim, 
Mr.  Peary's  associates  proceeded  to  assail  my  past  ca- 
reer, and  I  was  next  confronted  by  an  affidavit  made 
by  my  guide,  Barrill,  to  the  effect  that  I  had  not  scaled 
Mt.  McKinley,  an  affidavit  which,  as  I  later  secured 
evidence,  had  been  bought.  A  widely  heralded  "in- 
vestigation" was  announced  by  a  body  of  "explorers"  of 
which  Peary  was  president.  One  of  Colonel  Mann's 
muck-rakers  was  secretary,  while  its  moving  spirit  was 
Mr.  Peary's  press  agent,  Herbert  L.  Bridgman.  In  a 
desperate  effort  to  help  Peary,  a  cowardly  side  issue  was 
forced  through  Professor  Herschell  Parker,  who  had 
been  with  me  on  the  Mt.  McKinley  trip  but  who  had 
turned  back  after  becoming  panic-stricken  in  the  cross- 
ing of  mountain  torrents.  Mr.  Parker  expressed  doubt 
of  my  achievements  because  he  differed  with  me  as  to  the 
value  of  the  particular  instrument  to  ascertain  altitude 
which  I,  with  many  other  mountain  climbers,  used.  I 


14  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

had  offered  all  possible  proofs  as  to  having  climbed  the 
mountain,  as  full  and  adequate  proofs  as  any  moun- 
taineer could,  or  ever  has  offered. 

I  resented  the  meddlesomeness  of  this  pro-Peary 
group  of  kitchen  explorers,  riot  one  of  whom  knew  the 
first  principles  of  mountaineering.  From  such  an  in- 
vestigation, started  to  help  Peary  in  his  black-hand  ef- 
fort to  force  the  dagger,  with  the  money  power  easing 
men's  conscience— as  was  evident  at  the  time  every- 
where— no  fair  result  could  be  expected.  And  as  to  the 
widely  printed  Barrill  affidavit — this  carried  on  its  face 
the  story  of  pro-Peary  bribery  and  conspiracy.  I  have 
since  learned  that  for  it  $1,500  and  other  considerations 
were  paid.  Here  was  a  self-confessed  liar.  I  did  not 
think  that  a  sane  public  therefore  could  take  this  under- 
handed pro-Peary  charge  as  to  the  climb  of  Mt.  Mc- 
Kinley  seriously.  Indeed,  I  paid  little  attention  to  it, 
but  by  using  the  cutting  power  of  the  press  my  enemies 
succeeded  in  inflicting  a  wound  in  my  side. 

I  was  thus  plunged  into  the  bewildering  chaos 
which  friends  and  enemies  created,  and  swept  for  three 
months  through  a  cyclone  of  events  which  I  believe  no 
human  being  could  have  stood.  Before  returning,  I  felt 
weakened  mentally  and  physically  by  the  rigors  of  the 
North,  where  for  a  year  I  barely  withstood  starvation. 
I  was  now  whirled  about  the  country,  daily  delivering 
lectures,  greeting  thousands  of  people,  buffeted  by 
mobs  of  well-meaning  beings,  and  compelled  to  attend 
dinners  and  receptions  numbering  two  hundred  in  sixty 
days.  The  air  hissed  about  me  with  the  odious  charges 
which  came  from  every  direction.  I  was  alone,  help- 
less, without  a  single  wise  counsellor,  under  the  charge 


THE    DUNKLE-LOOSE    LIES  15 

of  the  enemies'  press,  mud-charged  guns  fired  from 
every  point  of  the  compass.  Unlimited  funds  were 
being  consumed  in  the  infamous  mill  of  bribery. 

I  had  not  the  money  nor  the  nature  to  fight  in  this 
kind  of  battle — so  I  withdrew.  At  once,  howls  of  ex- 
ecration gleefully  rose  from  the  ranks  of  my  enemies; 
my  departure  was  heralded  gloriously  as  a  confession 
of  imposture.  Advantage  was  taken  of  my  absence 
and  new,  perjured,  forged  charges  were  made  to  blacken 
my  name.  Far  from  my  home  and  unable  to  defend 
myself,  Dunkle  and  Loose  swore  falsely  to  having 
manufactured  figures  and  observations  under  my  direc- 
tion. When  I  learned  of  this,  much  as  it  hurt  me,  I 
knew  that  the  report  which  I  had  sent  to  Copenhagen 
would,  if  it  did  anything,  disprove  by  the  very  figures 
in  it  the  malicious  lying  document  published  in  the  New 
York  Times.  This,  combined  with  the  verdict  rendered 
by  the  University  of  Copenhagen — a  neutral  verdict 
which  carried  no  implication  of  the  non-attainment  of 
the  Pole,  but  which  was  interpreted  as  a  rejection- 
helped  to  stamp  me  in  the  minds  of  many  people  as  the 
most  monumental  impostor  the  world  has  ever  seen. 

I  fully  realized  that  under  the  circumstances  the 
only  verdict  of  an  unprejudiced  body  on  any  such  proofs 
to  such  a  claim  must  be  favorable  or  neutral.  The 
members  of  the  University  of  Copenhagen  who  exam- 
ined my  papers  were  neither  personal  friends  nor  mem- 
bers of  a  body  financially  interested  in  my  quest.  Their 
verdict  was  honest.  Mr.  Peary's  Washington  verdict 
was  dishonest,  for  two  members  of  the  jury  admitted 
a  year  later  in  Congress,  under  pressure,  that  in  the 
Peary  data  there  was  no  absolute  proof. 


16  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

By  the  time  I  determined  to  return  to  my  native 
country  and  state  my  case,  I  had  been  placed,  I  am 
certain,  in  a  position  of  undeserved  discredit  unparal- 
leled in  history.  No  epithet  was  too  vile  to  couple  with 
my  name.  I  was  declared  a  brazen  cheat  who  had  con- 
cocted the  most  colossal  lie  of  ages  whereby  to  hoax  an 
entire  world  for  gain.  I  was  made  the  subject  of  cheap 
jokes.  My  name  in  antagonistic  newspapers  had  be- 
come a  synonym  for  cheap  faking.  I  was  compelled 
to  see  myself  held  up  gleefully  as  an  impostor,  a  liar,  a 
fraud,  an  unscrupulous  scoundrel,  one  who  had  tried  to 
steal  honors  from  another,  and  who,  to  escape  exposure, 
had  fled  to  obscurity. 

All  the  scientific  work  which  scientists  themselves 
had  accepted  as  valuable,  all  the  necessary  hardships 
and  the  inevitable  agonies  of  my  last  Arctic  journey 
were  forgotten;  I  was  coupled  with  the  most  notorious 
characters  in  history  in  a  press  which  panders  to  the 
lowest  of  human  emotions  and  delights  in  men's  shame. 
When  I  realized  how  egregious,  how  frightful,  how  un- 
deserved was  all  this,  my  soul  writhed;  when  I  saw 
clearly,  with  the  perspective  which  only  time  can  give, 
how  I,  stepping  aside,  in  errors  of  confused  judgment 
which  were  purely  human,  had  seemingly  contributed  to 
my  unhappy  plight,  I  felt  the  sting  of  ignominy  greater 
than  that  which  has  broken  stronger  men's  hearts. 

For  the  glory  which  the  world  gives  to  such  an 
accomplishment  as  the  discovery  of  the  North  Pole,  I 
care  very  little,  but  \vhen  the  very  result  of  such  a  vic- 
tory is  used  as  a  whip  to  inflict  cuts  that  mark  my  future 
destiny,  I  have  a  right  to  call  a  halt.  I  have  claimed 
no  national  honors,  want  no  medals  or  money.  My  feet 


VICTORY  WAS   HONESTLY  WON  17 

stepped  over  the  Polar  wastes  with  a  will  fired  only  by 
a  personal  ambition  to  succeed  in  a  task  where  all  the 
higher  human  powers  were  put  to  the  test  of  fitness. 
That  victory  was  honestly  won.  All  that  the  achieve- 
ment ever  meant  to  me — the  lure  of  it  before  I  achieved 
it,  the  only  satisfaction  that  remains  since — is  that  it  is 
a  personal  accomplishment  of  brain  and  muscle  over 
hitherto  unconquered  forces,  a  thought  in  which  I  have 
pride.  From  the  tremendous  ovations  that  greeted  me 
when  I  returned  to  civilization  I  got  not  a  single  thrill. 
I  did  thrill  with  the  handclasp  of  confident,  kindly  peo- 
ple. I  still  thrill  with  the  handclasp  of  my  countrymen. 

Insofar  as  the  earthly  glory  and  applause  are  con- 
cerned, I  should  be  only  too  glad  to  share  them,  with  all 
material  accruements,  to  any  honest,  manly  rivals — 
those  of  the  past  and  those  of  the  future.  But  against 
the  unjust  charges  which  have  been  made  against  me, 
against  the  aspersions  on  my  personal  integrity,  against 
the  ignominy  with  which  my  name  has  been  besmirched, 
I  will  fight  until  the  public  gets  a  normal  perspective. 

I  have  never  hoaxed  a  mythical  achievement. 
Everything  I  have  ever  claimed  was  won  by  hard  labor, 
by  tremendous  physical  fortitude  and  endurance,  and 
by  such  personal  sacrifice  as  only  I,  and  my  immediate 
family,  will  ever  know. 

For  this  reason,  I  returned  to  my  country  in  the 
latter  part  of  1910,  as  I  always  intended  to  do,  after  a 
year's  rest.  By  this  time  I  knew  that  my  enemies 
would  have  said  all  that  was  possible  about  me;  the  ex- 
citement of  the  controversy  would  have  quieted,  and  I 
should  have  the  advantage  of  the  last  word. 

In   the  heat   of   the   controversy,    only   just   re- 


18  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

turned  in  a  weakened  condition  from  the  North,  and 
mentally  bewildered  by  the  unexpected  maelstrom  of 
events,  I  should  not  have  been  able,  with  justice  to  my- 
self, to  have  met  all  the  charges,  criminal  and  silly, 
which  were  made  against  me.  Even  what  I  did  say 
was  misquoted  and  distorted  by  a  sensational  press 
which  found  it  profitable  to  add  fuel  to  the  controversy. 
Sometimes  I  feel  that  no  man  ever  born  has  been  so 
variedly,  so  persistently  lied  about,  misrepresented, 
made  the  butt  of  such  countless  untruths  as  myself. 
When  I  consider  the  lies,  great  and  small,  which  for 
more  than  a  year,  throughout  the  entire  world,  have 
been  printed  about  me,  I  am  filled  almost  with  hope- 
lessness. And  sometimes,  when  I  think  how  I  have 
been  unjustly  dubbed  as  the  most  colossal  liar  of  his- 
tory, I  am  filled  with  a  sort  of  sardonic  humor. 

Returning  to  my  country,  determined  to  state  my 
case  freely  and  frankly,  and  making  the  honest  admis- 
sion that  any  claim  to  the  definite,  actual  attainment  of 
the  North  Pole — the  mathematical  pin-point  on  which 
the  earth  spins — must  rest  upon  assumptions,  because 
of  the  impossibility  of  accuracy  in  observations,  I  found 
that  this  admission,  which  every  explorer  would  have 
to  make,  which  Mr.  Peary  was  unwillingly  forced  to 
make  at  the  Congressional  investigation,  was  construed 
throughout  the  country  and  widely  heralded  as  a  * 'con- 
fession," that  garbled  extracts  were  lifted  from  the 
context  of  my  magazine  story  and  their  meaning  dis- 
torted. In  hundreds  of  newspapers  I  was  represented 
as  confessing  to  a  fraudulent  claim  or  as  making  a  plea 
of  insanity.  A  full  answer  to  the  charges  made  against 
me,  necessary  in  order  to  justly  cover  my  case,  because 


INJUSTICE    OF    THE    PRESS  19 

of  the  controversial  nature  of  certain  statements  which 
involved  Mr.  Peary,  was  prohibited  by  the  contract  I 
found  it  necessary  to  sign  in  order  to  get  any  statement 
of  a  comparatively  ungarbled  sort  before  a  public  which 
had  read  Mr.  Peary's  own  account  of  his  journey. 

I  found  the  columns  of  the  press  of  my  coun- 
try closed  to  the  publication  of  statements  which  in- 
volved my  enemies,  because  of  the  unfounded  prejudice 
created  against  me  during  my  absence  and  because  of 
the  power  of  Mr.  Peary's  friends.  It  is  almost  impos- 
sible in  any  condition  for  anyone  to  secure  a  refutation 
for  an  unfounded  attack  in  the  American  papers.  With 
the  entire  press  of  the  country  printing  misstatements, 
I  was  almost  helpless.  The  justice,  kindliness  and  gen- 
erous spirit  of  fair  dealing  of  the  American  people, 
however,  was  extended  to  me — I  found  the  American 
people  glad — nay,  eager — to  listen. 

It  is  this  spirit  which  has  encouraged  me,  after  the 
shameful  campaign  of  opprobrium  which  well-nigh 
broke  my  spirit,  to  tell  the  entire  and  unalterable  truth 
about  myself  and  an  achievement  in  which  I  still  be- 
lieve— in  fairness  to  myself,  in  order  to  clear  myself, 
in  order  that  the  truth  about  the  discovery  of  the  North 
Pole  may  be  known  by  my  people  and  in  order  that 
history  may  record  its  verdict  upon  a  full,  free  and 
frank  exposition.  I  do  not  address  myself  to  any 
clique  of  geographers  or  scientists,  but  to  the  great 
public  of  the  world,  and  herein,  for  the  first  time,  shall 
I  give  fully  whatever  proofs  there  may  be  of  my  con- 
quest. Upon  these  records  must  conviction  rest. 

Did  I  actually  reach  the  North  Pole?  When  I 
returned  to  civilization  and  reported  that  the  boreal 


20  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

center  had  been  attained,  I  believed  that  I  had  reached 
the  spot  toward  which  valiant  men  had  strained  for 
more  than  three  hundred  years.  I  still  believe  that  I 
reached  the  boreal  center  as  far  as  it  is  possible  for  any 
human  being  to  ascertain  it.  If  I  was  mistaken  in 
approximately  placing  my  feet  upon  the  pin-point 
about  which  this  controversy  has  raged,  I  maintain  that 
it  is  the  inevitable  mistake  any  man  must  make.  To 
touch  that  spot  would  be  an  accident.  That  any  other 
man  has  more  accurately  determined  the  Pole  I  do 
deny.  That  Mr.  Peary  reached  the  North  Pole — or 
its  environs — with  as  fair  accuracy  as  was  possible,  I 
have  never  denied.  That  Mr.  Peary  was  better  fitted 
to  reach  the  Pole,  and  better  equipped  to  locate  this 
mythical  spot,  I  do  not  admit.  In  fact,  I  believe  that, 
inasmuch  as  the  purely  scientific  ascertainment  is  a 
comparatively  simple  matter,  I  stood  a  better  chance  of 
more  scientifically  and  more  accurately  marking  the 
actual  spot  than  Mr.  Peary.  I  reached  my  goal  when 
the  sun  was  twelve  degrees  above  the  horizon,  and  was 
therefore  better  able  to  mark  a  mathematical  position 
than  Mr.  Peary  could  have  with  the  sun  at  less  than 
seven  degrees.  Mr.  Peary's  case  rests  upon  three 
observations  of  sun  altitude  so  low  that,  as  proof  of  a 
position,  they  are  worthless. 

Besides  taking  observations,  which,  as  I  shall  ex- 
plain in  due  course  in  my  narrative,  cannot  be  adequate, 
I  also  ascertained  what  I  believed  to  be  my  approximate 
position  at  the  boreal  center  and  en  route  by  measuring 
the  shadows  each  hour  of  the  long  day.  Inasmuch  as 
one's  shadow  decreases  or  increases  in  length  as  the  sun 
rises  toward  the  meridian  or  descends,  at  the  boreal 


THE  REAL  PROOF  OF  THE  QUEST     21 

center,  where  the  sun  circles  the  entire  horizon  at  prac- 
tically the  same  height  during  the  entire  day,  one's 
shadow  in  this  region  of  mystery  is  of  the  same  length. 
In  this  observation,  which  is  so  simple  that  a  child  may 
understand  it,  is  a  sure  and  certain  means  of  approxi- 
mately ascertaining  the  North  Pole.  I  took  advantage 
of  this  method,  which  does  not  seem  to  have  occurred  to 
any  other  Arctic  traveler,  and  this  helped  to  bring 
conviction. 

I  shall  in  this  volume  present  with  detail  the  story 
of  my  Arctic  journey — I  shall  tell  how  it  was  possible 
for  me  to  reach  my  goal,  why  I  believe  I  attained  that 
goal ;  and  upon  this  record  must  the  decision  of  my  peo- 
ple rest.  I  shall  herein  tell  the  story  of  an  unfair  and 
unworthy  plot  to  ruin  the  reputation  of  an  innocent 
man  because  of  an  achievement  the  full  and  prior  credit 
of  which  was  desired  by  a  brutally  selfish,  brutally  un- 
scrupulous rival.  I  shall  tell  of  a  tragedy  compared 
with  which  the  North  Pole  and  any  glory  accruing  to 
its  discoverer  pales  into  insignificance — the  tragedy  of 
a  spirit  that  was  almost  broken,  of  a  man  whose  honor 
and  pride  was  cut  with  knives  in  unclean  hands. 

When  you  have  read  all  this,  then,  and  only  then, 
in  fairness  to  yourself  and  in  fairness  to  me,  do  I  ask 
you  to  form  your  opinion.  Only  by  reading  this  can 
you  learn  the  full  truth  about  me,  about  my  claim  and 
about  the  plot  to  discredit  me,  of  the  charges  made 
against  me,  and  the  reason  for  all  of  my  own  actions. 
So  persistent,  so  world-wide  has  been  the  press  cam- 
paign made  by  my  enemies,  and  so  egregious  have  the 
charges  seemed  against  me,  so  multitudinous  have  the 
lies,  fake  stories,  fake  interviews,  fake  confessions  been, 


22  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

so  blatant  have  rung  the  hideous  cries  of  liar,  impostor, 
cheat  and  fraud,  that  the  task  to  right  myself,  explain 
myself,  and  bring  the  truth  into  clean  relief  has  seemed 
colossal. 

To  return  to  my  country  and  face  the  people  in 
view  of  all  that  was  being  said,  with  my  enemies  exult- 
ant, with  antagonistic  press  men  awaiting  me  as  some 
beast  to  be  devoured,  required  a  determined  gritting  of 
the  teeth  and  a  reserve  temperament  to  prevent  an 
undignified  battle. 

For  against  such  things  nature  dictates  the  tactics 
of  the  tiger.  I  faced  my  people,  I  found  them  fair  and 
kindly.  I  accused  my  enemies  of  their  lies,  and  they 
have  remained  silent.  Titanic  as  is  this  effort  of  forcing 
fair  play  where  biased  abuse  has  reigned  so  long,  I  am 
confident  of  success.  I  am  confident  of  the  honesty 
and  justice  of  my  people;  of  their  ability  spiritually  to 
sense,  psychically  to  appreciate  the  earmarks  of  a  clean, 
true  effort — a  worthy  ambition  and  a  real  attainment. 


INTO    THE    BOREAL    WILDS 

THE  YACHT  BRADLEY  LEAVES  GLOUCESTER INVADES  THE 

MAGIC  OF  THE  WATERS  OF  THE  ARCTIC  SEAS RECOL- 
LECTION    OF     BOYHOOD     AMBITIONS BEYOND     THE 

ARCTIC  CIRCLE — THE  WEAVING  OF  THE  POLAR  SPELL 

II 

OVER  THE  ARCTIC  CIRCLE 

On  July  3,  1907,  between  seven  and  eight  o'clock 
in  the  evening,  the  yacht,  which  had  been  renamed  the 
John  R.  Bradley,  quietly  withdrew  from  the  pier  at 
Gloucester,  Massachusetts,  and,  turning  her  prow 
ocean  ward,  slowly,  quietly  started  on  her  historic  jour- 
ney to  the  Arctic  seas. 

In  the  tawny  glow  of  sunset,  which  was  fading  in 
the  western  sky,  she  looked,  with  her  new  sails  unfurled, 
her  entire  body  newly  painted  a  spotless  white,  like 
some  huge  silver  bird  alighting  upon  the  sunshot  waters 
of  the  bay.  On  board,  all  was  quiet.  I  stood  alone, 
gazing  back  upon  the  picturesque  fishing  village  with 
a  tender  throb  at  my  heart,  for  it  was  the  last  village  of 
my  country  which  I  might  see  for  years,  or  perhaps  ever. 

Along  the  water's  edge  straggled  tiny  ramshackle 
boat  houses,  dun-colored  sheds  where  fish  are  dried,  and 
the  humble  miniature  homes  of  the  fisher  folk,  in  the 


24  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

windows  of  which  lights  soon  after  appeared.  On  the 
bay  about  us,  fishing  boats  were  lazily  bobbing  up  and 
down;  in  some,  old  bearded  fishermen  with  broad  hats, 
smoking  clay  and  corncob  pipes,  were  drying  their 
seines.  Other  boats  went  by,  laden  with  wriggling, 
silver-scaled  fish;  along  the  shore  I  could  still  see  tons 
of  fish  being  unloaded  from  scores  of  boats.  Through  the 
rosy  twilight,  voices  came  over  the  water,  murmurous 
sounds  from  the  shore,  cries  from  the  sea  mixed  with 
the  quaint  oaths  of  fisherf oik  at  work.  Ashore,  the  boys 
of  the  village  were  testing  their  firecrackers  for  the  mor- 
row; sputtering  explosions  cracked  through  the  air. 
Occasionally  a  faint  fire  rocket  scaled  the  sky.  But  no 
whistles  tooted  after  our  departure.  No  visiting  crowds 
of  curiosity-seekers  ashore  were  frenziedly  waving  us 
good-bye. 

An  Arctic  expedition  had  been  born  without  the 
usual  clamor.  Prepared  in  one  month,  and  financed  by 
a  sportsman  whose  only  mission  was  to  hunt  game 
animals  in  the  North,  no  press  campaign  heralded  our 
project,  no  government  aid  had  been  asked,  nor  had 
large  contributions  been  sought  from  private  individ- 
uals to  purchase  luxuries  for  a  Pullman  j  aunt  of  a  large 
party  Poleward.  For,  although  I  secretly  cherished  the 
ambition,  there  was  no  definite  plan  to  essay  the  North 
Pole. 

At  the  Holland  House  in  New  York,  a  compact 
was  made  between  John  R.  Bradley  and  myself  to 
launch  an  Arctic  expedition.  Because  of  my  experi- 
ence, Mr.  Bradley  delegated  to  me  the  outfitting  of  the 
expedition,  and  had  turned  over  to  me  money  enough 
to  pay  the  costs  of  the  hunting  trip.  A  Gloucester 


INTO  THE  BOREAL  WILDS  25 

fishing  schooner  had  been  purchased  by  me  and  was 
refitted,  covered  and  strengthened  for  ice  navigation. 
To  save  fuel  space  and  to  gain  the  advantage  of  a 
steamer,  I  had  a  Lozier  gasoline  motor  installed.  There 
had  been  put  on  board  everything  of  possible  use  and 
comfort  in  the  boreal  wild.  As  it  is  always  possible 
that  a  summer  cruising  ship  is  likely  to  be  lost  or  de- 
layed a  year,  common  prudence  dictated  a  preparation 
for  the  worst  emergencies. 

So  far  as  the  needs  of  my  own  personal  expedition 
were  concerned,  I  had  with  me  on  the  yacht  plenty  of 
hard  hickory  wood  for  the  making  of  sledges,  instru- 
ments, clothing  and  other  apparatus  gathered  with 
much  economy  during  my  former  years  of  exploration, 
and  about  one  thousand  pounds  of  pemmican.  These 
supplies,  necessary  to  offset  the  danger  of  shipwreck 
and  detention  by  ice,  were  also  all  that  would  be  re- 
quired for  a  Polar  trip.  When,  later,  I  finally  decided 
on  a  Polar  campaign,  extra  ship  supplies,  contributed 
from  the  boat,  were  stored  at  Annoatok.  There,  also, 
my  supply  of  pemmican  was  amplified  by  the  stores  of 
walrus  meat  and  fat  prepared  during  the  long  winter 
by  myself,  Rudolph  Francke  and  the  Eskimos. 

As  the  yacht  slowly  soared  toward  the  ocean,  and 
night  descended  over  the  fishing  village  with  its  home 
lights  glimmering  cheerfully  as  the  stars  one  by  one 
flecked  the  firmament  with  dots  of  fire,  I  felt  that  at 
last  I  nad  embarked  upon  my  destiny.  Whether  I 
should  be  able  to  follow  my  heart's  desire  I  did  not 
know;  I  did  not  dare  hazard  a  guess.  But  I  was  leav- 
ing my  country,  now  on  the  eve  of  celebrating  its  free- 
dom, behind  me;  I  had  elected  to  live  in  a  world  of  ice 


26  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

and  cold,  of  hunger  and  death,  which  lay  before  me — 
thousands  of  miles  to  the  North. 

Day  by  day  passed  monotonously;  we  only  occa- 
sionally saw  writhing  curves  of  land  to  the  west  of  us; 
about  us  was  the  illimitable  sea.  That  I  had  started  on 
a  journey  which  might  result  in  my  starting  for  the 
Pole,  that  my  final  chance  had  come,  vaguely  thrilled 
me.  Yet  the  full  purport  of  my  hope  seemed  beyond 
me.  On  the  journey  to  Sydney  my  mind  was  full.  I 
thought  of  the  early  days  of  my  childhood,  of  the  strange 
ambition  which  grew  upon  me,  of  my  struggles,  and  the 
chance  which  favored  me  in  the  present  expedition. 

In  the  early  days  of  my  childhood,  of  which  I  now 
had  only  indistinct  glimmerings,  I  remembered  a  rest- 
less surge  in  my  little  bosom,  a  yearning  for  something 
that  was  vague  and  undefined.  This  was,  I  suppose, 
that  nebulous  desire  which  sometimes  manifests  itself  in 
early  youth  and  later  is  asserted  in  strivings  toward 
some  splendid,  sometimes  spectacular  aim.  My  boy- 
hood was  not  happy.  As  a  tiny  child  I  was  discon- 
tented, and  from  the  earliest  days  of  consciousness  I 
felt  the  burden  of  two  things  which  accompanied  me 
through  later  life — an  innate  and  abnormal  desire  for 
exploration,  then  the  manifestation  of  my  yearning,  and 
the  constant  struggle  to  make  ends  meet,  that  sting  of 
poverty,  which,  while  it  tantalizes  one  with  its  horrid 
grind,  sometimes  drives  men  by  reason  of  the  strength 
developed  in  overcoming  its  concomitant  obstacles  to 
some  extraordinary  accomplishment. 

As  a  very  small  boy,  I  remember  being  fascinated 
hy  the  lure  of  a  forbidden  swimming  pool.  One  day, 
when  but  little  over  five,  I,  impelled  to  test  the  depth, 


INTO  THE  BOREAL  WILDS  27 

plunged  to  the  center,  where  the  water  was  above  my 
head,  and  nearly  lost  my  life.  I  shall  never  forget  that 
struggle,  and  though  I  nearly  gave  out,  in  that  short 
time  I  learned  to  swim.  It  seems  to  me  now  I  have 
been  swimming  and  struggling  ever  since. 

Abject  poverty  and  hard  work  marked  my  school 
days.  When  quite  a  boy,  after  the  death  of  my  father, 
I  came  to  New  York.  I  sold  fruit  at  one  of  the  mar- 
kets. I  saved  my  money.  I  enjoyed  no  luxuries. 
These  days  vividly  occur  in  my  mind.  Later  I  engaged 
in  a  dairy  business  in  Brooklyn,  and  on  the  meager 
profits  undertook  to  study  medicine. 

At  that  time  the  ambition  which  beset  me  was  undi- 
rected; it  was  only  later  that  I  found,  almost  by  acci- 
dent, what  became  its  focusing  point.  I  graduated 
from  the  University  of  New  York  in  1890.  I  felt  (as 
what  young  man  does  not?)  that  I  possessed  unusual 
qualifications  and  exceptional  ability.  An  office  was 
fitted  up,  and  my  anxiety  over  the  disappearing  pen- 
nies was  eased  by  the  conviction  that  I  had  but  to  hang 
out  my  shingle  and  the  place  would  be  thronged  with 
patients.  Six  months  passed.-  There  had  been  about 
three  patients.  . 

I  recall  sitting  alone  one  gloomy  winter  day. 
Opening  a  paper,  I  read  that  Peary  was  preparing  his 
1891  expedition  to  the  Arctic.  I  cannot  explain  my 
sensations.  It  was  as  if  a  door  to  a  prison  cell  had 
opened.  I  felt  the  first  indomitable,  commanding  call 
of  the  Northland.  To  invade  the  Unknown,  to  assail 
the  fastness  of  the  white,  frozen  North — all  that  was 
latent  in  me,  the  impetus  of  that  ambition  born  in  child- 
hood, perhaps  before  birth,  and  which  had  been  stifled 
and  starved,  surged  up  tumultuously  within  me. 


28  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

I  volunteered,  and  accompanied  Peary,  on  this,  the 
expedition  of  1891-92,  as  surgeon.  Whatever  merit 
my  work  possessed  has  been  cited  by  others. 

Unless  one  has  been  in  the  Arctic,  I  suppose  it  is 
impossible  to  understand  its  fascination — a  fascination 
which  makes  men  risk  their  lives  and  endure  inconceiv- 
able hardships  for,  as  I  view  it  now,  no  profitable  per- 
sonal purpose  of  any  kind.  The  spell  was  upon  me 
then.  It  was  upon  me  as  I  recalled  those  early  days  on 
the  Bradley  going  Northward.  With  a  feeling  of  sad- 
ness I  realize  that  the  glamor  is  all  gone  now. 

On  the  Peary  and  all  my  subsequent  expeditions  I 
served  without  pay. 

On  my  return  from  that  trip  I  managed  to  make 
ends  meet  by  meager  earnings  from  medicine.  I  was 
nearly  always  desperately  hard  pressed  for  money.  I 
tried  to  organize  several  cooperative  expeditions  to  the 
Arctic.  These  failed.  I  then  tried  to  arouse  interest  in 
Antarctic  exploration,  but  without  success.  Then  came 
the  opportunity  to  join  the  Belgian  Antarctic  Expedi- 
tion, again  without  pay. 

On  my  return  I  dreamed  of  a  plan  to  attain  the 
South  Pole,  and  for  a  long  time  worked  on  a  contriv- 
ance for  that  end — an  automobile  arranged  to  travel 
over  ice.  Financial  failure  again  confronted  me.  Dis- 
appointment only  added  to  my  ambition ;  it  scourged  me 
to  a  determination,  a  conviction  that — I  want  you  to 
remember  this,  to  bear  in  mind  the  mental  conviction 
which  buoyed  me — I  must  and  should  succeed.  It  is 
always  this  innate  conviction  which  encourages  men  to 
exceptional  feats,  to  tremendous  failures  or  splendid, 
single-handed  success. 


INTO  THE  BOREAL  WILDS  29 

A  summer  in  the  Arctic  followed  my  Antarctic 
trip,  and  I  returned  to  invade  the  Alaskan  wilds.  I  suc- 
ceeded in  scaling  Mt.  McKinley.  After  my  Alaskan 
expeditions,  the  routine  of  my  Brooklyn  office  work 
seemed  like  the  confinement  of  prison.  I  fretted  and 
chafed  at  the  thought.  Let  me  have  a  chance,  and  I 
would  succeed.  This  thought  always  filled  my  mind. 
I  convinced  myself  that  in  some  way  the  attainment  of 
one  of  the  Poles — the  effort  on  which  I  had  spent  six- 
teen years — would  become  possible. 

I  had  no  money.  My  work  in  exploration  had 
netted  me  nothing,  and  all  my  professional  income  was 
soon  spent.  Unless  you  have  felt  the  goading,  devilish 
grind  of  poverty  hindering  you,  dogging  you,  you  can- 
not know  the  mental  fury  into  which  I  was  lashed. 

I  waited,  and  fortune  favored  me  in  that  I  met 
Mr.  John  R.  Bradley.  We  planned  the  Arctic  expedi- 
tion on  which  I  was  now  embarked.  Mr.  Bradley's  in- 
terest in  the  trip  was  that  of  a  great  sportsman,  eager 
to  seek  big  game  in  the  Arctic.  My  immediate  purpose 
was  to  return  again  to  the  frozen  North.  The  least 
the  journey  would  give  me  was  an  opportunity  to  com- 
plete the  study  of  the  Eskimos  which  I  had  started 
in  1891. 

Mr.  Bradley  and  I  had  talked,  of  course,  of  the 
Pole;  but  it  was  not  an  important  incentive  to  the 
journey.  Back  in  my  brain,  barely  above  the  subcon- 
scious realm,  was  the  feeling  that  this,  however,  might 
offer  opportunity  in  the  preparation  for  a  final  future 
determination.  I,  therefore,  without  any  conscious 
purpose,  and  with  my  last  penny,  paid  out  of  my  purse 


30  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

for  extra  supplies  for  a  personal  expedition  should  I 
leave  the  ship.* 

Aboard  the  Bradley,  going  northward,  my  plans 
were  not  at  all  definite.  Even  had  I  known  before 
leaving  New  York  that  I  should  try  for  the  Pole,  I 
should  not  have  sought  any  geographical  license  from 
some  vague  and  unknown  authority.  Though  much  has 
since  been  made  by  critics  of  our  quiet  departure,  I 
always  felt  the  quest  of  the  Pole  a  personal  ambi- 
tiont,  a  crazy  hunger  I  had  to  satisfy. 

Fair  weather  followed  us  to  Sydney,  Cape  Breton. 

*  Accused  of  being  the  most  colossal  liar  of  history,  I  sometimes 
feel  that  more  lies  have  been  told  about  me  than  about  anyone  ever 
born.  I  have  been  guilty  of  many  mistakes.  Most  men  really  true  to 
themselves  admit  that.  My  claim  to  the  North  Pole  may  always  be  ques- 
tioned. Yet,  when  I  regard  the  lies  great  and  small  attached  to  me,  I  am 
filled  almost  with  indifference. 

As  a  popular  illustration  of  the  sort  of  yarns  that  were  told,  let  me 
refer  to  the  foolish  fake  of  the  gum  drops.  Someone  started  the  story 
that  I  expected  to  reach  the  Pole  by  bribing  the  Eskimos  with  gum 
drops — perhaps  the  idea  was  that  I  was  to  lure  them  on  from  point  to 
point  with  regularly  issued  rations  of  these  confections. 

Wherever  I  went  on  my  lecture  tour  after  my  return  to  the  United 
States,  much  to  my  irritation  I  saw  "Cook"  gum  drops  conspicuously 
displayed  in  confectionery  store  windows.  Hundreds  of  pounds  of  gum 
drops  were  sent  to  my  hotel  with  the  compliments  of  the  manufacturers. 
On  all  sides  I  heard  the  gum-drop  story,  and  in  almost  every  paper  read 
the  reiterated  tale  of  leading  the  Eskimos  to  the  Pole  by  dangling  a  gum 
drop  on  a  string  before  them.  I  never  denied  this,  as  I  never  denied 
any  of  the  fakes  printed  about  me.  The  fact  is,  that  I  never  heard 
the  gum-drop  yarn  until  I  came  to  New  York.  We  took  no  gum  drops 
with  us  on  our  Polar  trip,  and,  to  my  knowledge,  no  Eskimo  ate  a  gum 
drop  while  with  me. 

fAmong  the  many  things  which  the  public  has  been  misled  into 
believing  is  that  Mr.  Bradley  and  I  together  connived  the  trip  for  the 
purpose  of  essaying  this  quest  of  the  Pole.  The  fact  is,  not  until  I 
reached  Annoatok,  and  saw  that  conditions  were  favorable  for  a  long 
sledge  journey,  did  I  finally  determine  to  make  a  Poleward  trip;  not 
until  then  did  I  tell  my  decision  definitely  to  Mr.  Bradley. 

One  of  the  big  mistakes  which  has  been  pounded  into  the  public  mind 
is  that  the  proposed  Polar  exploit  was  expensively  financed.  It  did  cost 
a  great  deal  to  finance  the  planned  hunting  trip.  Mr.  Bradley's  expenses 
aggregated,  perhaps,  $50,000,  but  my  journey  Northward,  which  was 
but  an  extension  of  this  yachting  cruise,  cost  comparatively  little. 


INTO  THE  BOREAL  WILDS  31 

From  this  point  we  sailed  over  the  Gulf  of  St. 
Lawrence,  then  entered  the  Straits  of  Belle  Isle  at  a 
lively  speed.  On  a  cold,  cheerless  day  in  the  middle  of 
July  we  arrived  at  Battle  Harbor,  a  little  town  at  the 
southeastern  point  of  Labrador,  where  Mr.  Bradley 
joined  us.  He  had  preceded  us  north,  by  rail  and  coast- 
ing vessels,  after  watching  a  part  of  the  work  of  out- 
fitting the  schooner. 

On  the  morning  of  July  16  we  left  the  rockbound 
coast  of  North  America  and  steered  straight  for  Green- 
land. In  this  region  a  dense  and  heavy  fog  almost 
always  lies  upon  the  sea.  Then  nothing  is  visible  but 
slow-swaying  gray  masses,  which  veil  all  objects  in  a 
shroud  of  ghostly  dreariness.  Through  the  fog  can  be 
heard  the  sound  of  fisher-boat  horns,  often  the  very 
voices  of  the  fishermen  themselves,  while  their  crafts 
are  absolutely  hidden  from  view.  On  this  trip,  how- 
ever, from  time  to  time,  great  fragments  of  fog  slowly 
lifted,  and  we  saw,  emerging  out  of  the  gray  mistiness, 
islands,  bleak  and  black  and  weathertorn,  and  patches 
of  ocean  dotted  with  scores  of  Newfoundland  boats, 
which  invade  this  region  to  fish  for  cod.  We  entered 
the  Arctic  current,  and  breasting  its  stream,  a  fancy 
came  that  perhaps  this  current,  flowing  down  from  out 
of  the  mysterious  unknown,  came  from  the  very  Pole 
itself. 

Continuing,  we  entered  Davis  Straits,  where  we 
encountered  headwinds  that  piled  up  the  water  in  great 
waves.  It  was  a  good  test  of  the  sailing  qualities  of  the 
Bradley,  and  well  did  the  small  craft  respond. 

Long  before  the  actual  coast  line  of  Greenland 
could  be  seen  we  had  a  first  glimpse  of  the  beauties  that 


32  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

these  northern  regions  can  show.  Like  great  sapphires, 
blue  ice  floated  in  a  golden  sea;  towering  masses  of 
crystal  rose  gloriously,  dazzling  the  eye  and  gladden- 
ing the  heart  with  their  superb  beauty.  The  schooner 
sailed  into  this  wonderful  yellow  sea,  which  soon  be- 
came a  broad  and  gleaming  surface  of  molten  silver.  Al- 
though this  striking  beauty  of  the  North,  which  it  often 
is  so  chary  of  displaying,  possesses  a  splendor  of  color 
equal  to  the  gloriousness  of  tropical  seas,  it  always 
impresses  one  with  a  steely  hardness  of  quality  sug- 
gestive of  the  steely  hardness  of  the  heart  of  the  North. 
And  it  somehow  seemed,  curiously  enough,  as  if  all  this 
wonderful  glitter  was  a  shimmering  reflection  from  the 
ice-covered  mountains  of  the  Greenland  interior,  al- 
though the  mountains  themselves  were  still  invisible. 

We  swung  from  side  to  side,  dodging  icebergs. 
We  steered  cautiously  around  low-floating  masses, 
watching  to  see  that  the  keel  was  not  caught  by  some 
treacherous  jutting  spur  just  beneath  the  water-line. 
Through  this  fairyland  of  light  and  color  we  sailed 
slowly  into  a  region  rich  in  animal  life,  a  curious  and 
striking  sight.  Seals  floundered  in  the  sunbeams  or 
slumbered  on  masses  of  ice,  for  even  in  this  Northland 
there  is  a  strange  commingling  and  contrast  of  heat 
and  cold.  Gulls  and  petrels  darted  and  fluttered  about 
us  in  every  direction,  porpoises  were  making  swift  and 
curving  leaps,  even  a  few  whales  added  to  the  magic 
and  apparent  unreality  of  it  all. 

At  length  the  coast  showed  dimly  upon  the  horizon, 
veiled  in  a  glow  of  purple  and  gold.  The  wind  fresh- 
ened, the  sails  filled,  and  the  speed  of  the  schooner  in- 
creased. We  were  gradually  nearing  Holsteinborg, 


INTO  THE  BOREAL  WILDS  33 

and  the  course  was  set  a  point  more  in  towards  shore. 
The  land  was  thrown  into  bold  relief  by  the  brilliancy 
of  lights  and  shadows,  and  in  the  remarkably  clear  air 
it  seemed  as  if  it  could  be  reached  in  an  hour.  But  this 
was  an  atmospheric  deception,  of  the  kind  familiar  to 
those  who  know  the  pure  air  of  the  Rocky  Mountains, 
for,  although  the  land  seemed  near,  it  was  at  least  forty 
miles  away.  The  general  color  of  the  land  was  a  frosty 
blue,  and  there  were  deep  valleys  to  be  seen,  gashes  cut 
by  the  slow  movement  of  centuries  of  glaciers,  with 
rocky  headlands  leaping  forward,  bleak  and  cold.  It 
appeared  to  be  a  land  of  sublime  desolation. 

The  course  was  set  still  another  point  nearer  the 
coast;  the  wind  continued  fair  and  strong;  and,  with 
every  possible  stitch  of  canvas  spread,  the  schooner 
went  rapidly  onward. 

We  saw  rocky  islands,  drenched  by  clouds  of  spray 
and  battered  by  drifting  masses  of  ice.  There  the  eider 
duck  builds  its  nest  and  spends  the  brief  summer  of 
the  Arctic.  We  saw  dismal  cliffs,  terra  cotta  and  buff 
in  color,  in  the  crevasses  of  which  millions  of  birds  made 
their  homes,  and  from  which  they  rose,  frightened,  in 
dense  clouds,  giving  vent  to  a  great  volume  of 
clamorous  hoarseness. 

Through  our  glasses  we  could  see  a  surprising 
sight  in  such  a  land — little  patches  of  vegetation,  seal 
brown  or  even  emerald  green.  Yet,  so  slight  were  these 
patches  of  green  that  one  could  not  but  wonder  what 
freak  of  imagination  led  the  piratical  Eric  the  Red,  one 
thousand  years  ago,  to  give  to  this  coast  a  name  so  sug- 
gestive of  luxuriant  forests  and  shrubs  and  general 
lushness  of  growth  as  "Greenland."  Never,  surely,  was 


34  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

there  a  greater  misnomer,  unless  one  chooses  to  regard 
the  old-time  Eric  as  a  practical  joker. 

Between  the  tall  headlands  there  were  fiords  cut- 
ting far  into  the  interior ;  arms  of  the  sea,  these,  winding 
and  twisting  back  for  miles.  Along  these  quiet  land- 
locked waters  the  Eskimos  love  to  hunt  and  fish,  just  as 
their  forefathers  have  done  for  centuries.  Shaggy  look- 
ing fellows  are  these  Eskimos,  clothed  in  the  skins  of 
animals,  relieved  by  dashes  of  color  of  Danish  fabric, 
most  of  them  still  using  spears,  and  thus,  to  outward 
appearance,  in  the  arts  of  life  almost  like  those  that 
Eric  saw. 

Although  this  rugged  coast,  with  its  low-lying 
islands,  its  icebergs  and  floating  icefields,  its  bleak  head- 
lands, its  picturesque  scenes  of  animal  life,  is  a  con- 
tinuous delight,  it  presents  the  worst  possible  dangers  to 
navigation,  not  only  from  reefs  and  under-water  ice, 
but  because  there  are  no  lighthouses  to  mark  permanent 
danger  spots  and  because  signs  of  impending  storm  are 
ever  on  the  horizon.  While  navigating  the  coast,  our 
officers  spent  sleepless  nights  of  anxiety;  but  the  short- 
ening of  the  nights  and  lengthening  of  the  days,  the 
daily  night  brightening  resulting  from  the  northerly 
movement,  combined  with  an  occasional  flash  of  the 
aurora,  gradually  relieved  the  tension  of  the  situation. 

By  the  time  the  island  of  Disco  rose  splendidly 
out  of  the  northern  blue,  the  Arctic  Circle  had  been 
crossed,  and  a  sort  of  celestial  light-house  brightened 
the  path  of  the  schooner.  Remaining  on  deck  until 
after  midnight,  we  were  rewarded  by  a  sight  of  the 
sun  magnified  to  many  times  its  normal  size,  glowing 
above  the  rim  of  the  frosty  sea.  A  light  wind  blew 


INTO  THE  BOREAL  WILDS  35 

gently  from  the  coast,  the  sea  ran  in  swells  of  gold,  and 
the  sky  was  streaked  with  topaz  and  crimson. 

Bathed  in  an  indescribable  glow,  the  towering 
sides  of  the  greatest  icebergs  showed  a  medley  of  ever- 
changing,  iridescent  colors.  The  jutting  pinnacles  of 
others  seemed  like  oriental  minarets  of  alabaster  fretted 
with  old  gold.  Here  and  there,  as  though  flung  by  an 
invisible  hand  from  the  zenith,  straggled  long  cloud  rib- 
bons of  flossy  crimson  and  silver.  Gradually,  im- 
perially, the  sun  rose  higher  and  flushed  sky  and  sea 
with  deeper  orange,  more  burning  crimson,  and  the 
bergs  into  vivid  ruby,  chalcedony  and  chrysophase 
walls.  This  suddenly-changing,  kaleidoscopic  whirl  of 
color  was  rendered  more  effective  because,  in  its  midst, 
the  cliffs  of  Disco  rose  frowningly,  a  great  patch  of 
blackness  in  artistic  contrast.  A  pearly  vapor  now 
began  to  creep  over  the  horizon,  and  gradually  spread 
over  the  waters,  imparting  a  gentle  and  restful  tone  of 
blue.  This  gradually  darkened  into  irregular  shadows; 
the  brilliant  color  glories  faded  away.  Finally  we  re- 
tired to  sleep  with  a  feeling  that  sailing  Poleward  was 
merely  a  joyous  pleasure  journey  over  wonderful 
and  magic  waters.  This,  the  first  glorious  vision  of 
the  midnight  sun,  glowed  in  my  dreams — the  augury  of 
success  in  that  for  which  my  heart  yearned.  The  glow 
never  faded,  and  the  weird  lure  unconsciously  began  to 
weave  its  spell. 

Next  morning,  when  we  went  on  deck,  the  schooner 
was  racing  eastward  through  heavy  seas.  The  terraced 
cliffs  of  Disco,  relieved  by  freshly  fallen  snow,  were  but 
a  few  miles  off.  The  cry  of  gulls  and  guillemots 
echoed  from  rock  to  rock.  Everything  was  divested  of 


36  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

the  glory  of  the  day  before.  The  sun  was  slowly  rising 
among  mouse-colored  clouds.  The  bergs  were  of  an 
ugly  blue,  and  the  sea  ran  in  gloomy  lines  of  ebony. 
Although  the  sea  was  high,  there  was  little  wind,  but  we 
felt  that  a  storm  was  gathering  and  sought  to  hasten 
to  shelter  in  Godhaven— a  name  which  speaks  elo- 
quently of  the  dangers  of  this  coast  and  the  precious 
value  of  such  a  harbor. 

As  we  entered  the  narrow  channel,  which  turns 
among  low,  polished  rocks  and  opens  into  the  harbor, 
two  Eskimos  in  kayaks  came  out  to  act  as  pilots.  Tak- 
ing them  aboard,  we  soon  found  a  snug  anchorage, 
secure  from  wind  and  sea.  The  launch  was  lowered, 
and  in  it  we  left  the  schooner  for  a  visit  to  the  Governor. 

Coming  up  to  a  little  pier,  we  were  cordially 
greeted  by  Governor  Fenker,  who  escorted  us  to  his 
home,  where  his  wife,  a  cultivated  young  Danish 
woman,  offered  us  sincere  hospitality. 

The  little  town  itself  was  keenly  alive.  All  the 
inhabitants,  and  all  the  dogs  as  well,  were  jumping 
about  on  the  rocks,  eagerly  gazing  at  our  schooner. 
The  houses  of  the  Governor  and  the  Inspector  were  the 
most  important  of  the  town.  They  were  built  of  wood 
imported  from  Denmark,  and  were  covered  with  tarred 
paper.  Though  quite  moderate  in  size,  the  houses 
seemed  too  large  and  out  of  place  in  their  setting  of 
ice-polished  rocks.  Beyond  them  were  twenty  Eskimo 
huts,  nearly  square  in  shape,  constructed  of  wood  and 
stone,  the  cracks  of  which  were  filled  tightly  with  moss. 

We  deferred  our  visit  to  the  native  huts,  and  in- 
vited Governor  Fenker  and  his  wife  to  dine  aboard  the 
schooner.  The  surprise  of  the  evening  for  these  two 


INTO  THE  BOREAL  WILDS  37 

guests  was  the  playing  of  our  phonograph,  the  tunes  of 
which  brought  tears  of  homesickness  to  the  eyes  of  the 
Governor's  gentle  wife. 

Anywhere  on  the  coast  of  Greenland,  the  coming 
of  a  ship  is  always  one  of  the  prime  events  of  the  season. 
So  uneventful  is  life  in  these  out-of-the-way  places  that 
such  an  arrival  is  the  greatest  possible  social  enlivener. 
The  instant  that  the  approach  of  our  schooner  had  been 
noted,  the  Eskimo  girls — queer  little  maids  in  queer 
little  trousers — decided  upon  having  a  dance,  and  word 
was  brought  us  that  everyone  was  invited  to  take  part. 
The  sailors  eagerly  responded,  and  tumbled  ashore  as 
soon  as  they  were  permitted,  leaving  merely  enough  for 
a  watch  on  board  ship.  Then,  to  the  sound  of  savage 
music,  the  dance  was  continued  until  long  after  mid- 
night. A  curious  kind  of  midnight  dance  it  was,  with 
the  sun  brightly  shining  in  a  night  unveiled  of  glitter 
and  color  glory.  The  sailors  certainly  found  pleasure 
in  whirling  about,  their  arms  encircling  fat  and  clumsy 
waists.  They  did  admit,  however,  when  back  on  board 
the  schooner,  that  the  smell  of  the  furs  within  which  the 
maidens  had  spent  the  past  winter  was  less  agreeable 
than  the  savor  of  fish.  The  name  of  this  scattered  settle- 
ment of  huts,  Godhaven,  comes,  clearly  enough,  from 
its  offering  fortunate  refuge  from  storms;  that  the 
place  is  also  known  as  Lively  is  not  in  the  least  to  be 
wondered  at,  if  one  has  watched  a  midnight  dance  of  the 
little  population  and  their  visitors. 

Before  hauling  in  anchor  in  the  harbor  of  God- 
haven,  we  made  some  necessary  repairs  to  the  yacht  and 
filled  our  tanks  with  water.  With  a  free  wind  speeding 
onward  to  the  west  of  Disco,  we  passed  the  narrow 


38  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

strait  known  as  the  Vaigat  eafly  the  following  morning. 
As  I  stood  on  deck  and  viewed  the  passing  of  icebergs, 
glittering  in  the  limpid,  silvery  light  of  morning  like 
monstrous  diamonds,  there  began  to  grow  within  me  a 
feeling — that  throbbed  in  pulsation  with  the  onward 
movement  of  the  boat — that  every  minute,  every  mile, 
meant  a  nearing  to  that  mysterious  center,  on  the  at- 
taining of  which  I  had  set  my  heart,  and  which,  even 
now,  seemed  unlikely,  improbable.  Yet  the  thought 
gave  me  a  thrill. 

Before  noon  we  reached  the  mouth  of  Umanak 
Fiord,  into  the  delightful  waters  of  which  we  were 
tempted  to  enter.  The  lure  of  the  farther  North  de- 
cided us  against  this,  and  soon  the  striking  Svarten 
Huk  (Black  Hook),  a  great  rock  cliff,  loomed  upon 
the  horizon.  Beyond  it,  gradually  appeared  a  long  chain 
of  those  islands  among  which  lies  Upernavik,  where  the 
last  traces  of  civilized  or  semi-civilized  life  are  found. 
The  wind  increased  in  force  but  the  horizon  remained 
remarkably  clear.  Over  a  bounding  sea  we  sped  rapidly 
along  to  the  west,  into  the  labyrinth  of  islands  that  are 
sprinkled  along  the  southern  shore  of  Melville  Bay.* 
Beyond,  we  were  to  come  into  the  true  boreal  wilder- 


*  The  killing  of  Astrup. — The  head  of  Melville  Bay  was  explored  by 
Eivind  Astrup  while  a  member  of  the  Peary  expedition  of  1894-1895. 
Astrup  had  been  a  member  of  the  first  expedition,  serving  without  pay, 
during  1891  and  1892  and  proving  himself  a  loyal  supporter  and  helper  of 
Mr.  Peary,  when  he  crossed  the  inland  ice  in  1892.  As  a  result  of  eating 
pemmican  twenty  years  old,  in  1895,  Astrup  was  disabled  by  poisoning, 
due  to  Peary's  carelessness  in  furnishing  poisoned  food.  Recovering  from 
this  illness,  he  selected  a  trustworthy  Eskimo  companion,  went  south,  and 
under  almost  inconceivable  difficulties,  explored  and  mapped  the  ice  walls, 
with  their  glaciers  and  mountains,  and  the  off-lying  islands  of  Melville  Bay. 
This  proved  a  creditable  piece  of  work  of  genuine  discovery.  Returning, 
he  prepared  his  data  and  published  it,  thus  bringing  credit  and  honor  on 
an  expedition  which  was  in  other  respects  a  failure. 

Astrup's   publication  of  this  work  aroused  Peary's   envy.     Publicly, 


INTO  THE  BOREAL  WILDS  39 

ness  of  ice,  where  there  were  only  a  few  savage 
aborigines,  its  sole  inhabitants. 

On  the  following  day,  with  reduced  sail  and  the 
help  of  the  auxiliary  engine,  we  pushed  far  up  into 
Melville  Bay,  where  we  ran  into  fields  of  pack-ice. 
Here  we  decided  to  hunt  for  game.  With  this  pur- 
pose it  was  necessary  to  keep  close  to  land.  Here  also 
came  our  first  realistic  experience  with  the  great  forces 
of  the  North.  The  pack-ice  floated  close  around  us, 
young  ice  cemented  the  broken  masses  together,  and 
for  several  days  we  were  thus  closely  imprisoned  in 
frozen  seas. 

These  days  of  enforced  delay  were  days  of  great 
pleasure,  for  the  bears  and  seals  on  the  ice  afforded 
considerable  sport.  The  constant  danger  of  our  position, 
however,  required  a  close  watch  for  the  safety  of  the 
schooner.  The  Devil's  Thumb,  a  high  rock  shaped  like 
a  dark  thumb  pointing  at  the  sky,  loomed  darkly 
and  beckoningly  before  us.  A  biting  wind  descended 
from  the  interior. 

The  ice  groaned;  the  eiderducks,  guillemots  and 
gulls  uttered  shrill  and  disturbing  cries,  seemingly  sens- 
ing the  coming  of  a  storm. 

For  three  days  we  were  held  in  the  grip  of  the  re- 
lentless pack;  then  the  glimmer  of  the  land  ice  changed 

Peary  denounced  Astrup.  Astrup,  being  young  and  sensitive,  brooded 
over  this  injustice  and  ingratitude  until  he  had  almost  lost  his  reason. 
The  abuse  was  of  the  same  nature  as  that  heaped  on  others,  the  same  as 
that  finally  hurled  at  me  in  the  wireless  "Gold  Brick"  slurs.  For  days  and 
weeks,  Astrup  talked  of  nothing  but  the  infamy  of  Peary's  attack  on  him- 
self and  the  contemptible  charge  of  desertion  which  Peary  made  against 
Astrup's  companions.  Then  he  suddenly  left  my  home,  returned  to  Norway, 
and  we  next  heard  of  his  suicide.  Here  is  one  life  directly  chargeable  to 
Peary's  narrow  and  intolerant  brutality.  Directly  this  was  not  murder 
with  a  knife — but  it  was  as  heinous — for  a  young  and  noble  life  was 
cut  short  by  the  cowardly  dictates  of  jealous  egotism. 


40  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

to  an  ugly  gray,  the  pack  around  us  began  to  crack 
threateningly,  and  the  sky  darkened  to  the  southward. 

The  wind  ominously  died  away.  The  air  thickened 
rapidly.  A  general  feeling  of  anxiety  came  over  us, 
although  my  familiarity  with  storms  in  the  North  made 
it  possible  for  me  to  explain  that  heavy  seas  are  seldom 
felt  within  the  zone  of  a  large  ice-pack,  for  the  reason 
that  the  icebergs,  the  flat  ice  masses,  and  even  the  small 
floating  fragments,  ordinarily  hold  down  the  swells. 
Even  when  the  pack  begins  to  break,  the  lanes  of  water 
between  the  fragments  thicken  under  the  lower  tem- 
perature like  an  oiled  surface,  and  offer  an  easy  sea. 
Furthermore,  a  really  severe  wind  would  be  sure  to  re- 
lease the  schooner,  and  it  would  then  be  possible  to  trust 
it  to  its  staunch  qualities  in  free  water. 

Hardly  had  we  finished  dinner  when  we  heard  the 
sound  of  a  brisk  wind  rushing  through  the  rigging. 
Hurrying  to  the  deck,  we  saw  coils  of  what  looked  like 
smoky  vapor  rising  in  the  south  as  if  belched  from  some 
great  volcano.  The  gloom  on  the  horizon  was  rapidly 
growing  deeper.  The  sound  of  the  wind  changed  to  a 
threatening,  sinister  hiss.  In  the  piercing  steel-gray 
light  we  saw  the  ice  heave  awesomely,  like  moving  hills, 
above  the  blackenirig  water.  The  bergs  swayed  and 
rocked,  and  the  massed  ice  gave  forth  strange,  troublous 
sounds. 

Suddenly  a  channel  began  to  open  through  the  ice 
in  front  of  us.  The  trisail  was  quickly  set,  the  other 
sails  being  left  tightly  furled,  and  with  the  engine  help- 
ing to  push  us  in  the  desired  direction,  we  drew  deep 
breaths  of  relief  as  we  moved  out  into  the  free  water 
to  the  westward. 


INTO  THE  BOREAL  WILDS  41 

We  felt  a  sense  of  safety  now,  although,  clear  of  the 
ice,  the  sea  rose  about  us  with  a  sickening  suddenness. 
Black  as  night,  the  water  seemed  far  more  dangerous 
because  the  waves  were  everywhere  dashing  angrily 
against  walls  of  ice.  Already  strong,  the  wind  veered 
slightly  and  increased  to  a  fierce,  persistent  gale.  Like 
rubber  balls,  the  bergs  bounded  and  rolled  in  the  sea. 
The  sound  of  the  storm  was  now  a  thunder  suggestive 
of  constantly  exploding  cannons.  But,  fortunately,  we 
were  snug  aboard,  and,  keeping  the  westerly  course, 
soon  escaped  the  dangers  of  ensnaring  ice. 

We  were  still  in  a  heavy  storm,  and  had  we  not 
had  full  confidence  in  the  ship,  built  as  she  was  to  with- 
stand the  storms  of  the  Grand  Banks,  we  should  still 
have  felt  anxiety,  for  the  schooner  rolled  and  pitched 
and  the  masts  dipped  from  side  to  side  until  they  almost 
touched  the  water. 

Icy  water  swept  the  deck.  A  rain  began  to  fall, 
and  quickly  sheathed  the  masts  and  ropes  in  ice.  Snow 
followed,  giving  a  surface  as  of  sandpaper  to  the  slip- 
pery, icy  decks.  The  temperature  was  not  low,  but  the 
cutting  wind  pierced  one  to  the  very  marrow.  Our 
men  were  drenched  with  spray  and  heavily  coated  with 
ice.  Although  suffering  severely,  the  sailors  maintained 
their  courage  and  appeared  even  abnormally  happy. 
Gradually  we  progressed  into  the  open  sea.  In  the 
course  of  four  hours  the  storm  began  to  abate,  and,  un- 
der a  double-reefed  foresail,  at  last  we  gleefully  rode 
out  the  finish  of  the  storm  in  safety. 


THE    DRIVING     SPUR     OF     THE     POLAR 

QUEST 

ON    THE    FRIGID     PATHWAY    OF    THREE     CENTURIES     OF 

HEROIC    MARTYRS MEETING   THE   STRANGE    PEOPLE 

OF  THE  FARTHEST  NORTH — THE  LIFE  OF  THE  STONE 

AGE ON   THE   CHASE   WITH   THE  ESKIMOS MANEE 

AND  SPARTAN  ESKIMO  COURAGE 

III 

STRANGE  TRAITS  OF  NORTHERNMOST  MAN 

I  have  often  wondered  of  late  about  the  dazzling 
white,  eerie  glamor  with  which  the  Northland  weaves 
its  spell  about  the  heart  of  a  man.  I  know  of  nothing 
on  earth  so  strange,  so  wonderful,  withal  so  sad.  Pur- 
suing our  course  through  Melville  Bay,  I  felt  the  fatal 
magic  of  it  enthralling  my  very  soul.  For  hours  I 
stood  on  deck  alone,  the  midnight  sun,  like  some 
monstrous  perpetual  light  to  some  implacable  frozen- 
hearted  deity,  burning  blindingly  upon  the  horizon  and 
setting  the  sea  aflame.  The  golden  colors  suffused  my 
mind,  and  I  swam  in  a  sea  of  molten  glitter. 

I  was  consumed  for  hours  by  but  one  yearning — 
a  yearning  that  filled  and  intoxicated  me — to  go  on, 
and  on,  and  ever  onward,  where  ho  man  had  ever  been. 
Perhaps  it  is  the  human  desire  to  excel  others,  to 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         45 

prove,  because  of  the  innate  egotism  of  the  human  unit, 
that  one  possesses  qualities  of  brain  and  muscle  which 
no  other  possesses,  that  has  crazed  men  to  perform  this, 
the  most  difficult  physical  test  in  the  world.  The 
lure  of  the  thing  is  unexplainable. 

During  those  dizzy  hours  on  deck  I  thought  of 
those  who  had  preceded  me ;  of  heroic  men  who  for  three 
centuries  had  braved  suffering,  cold  and  famine,  who 
had  sacrificed  the  comforts  of  civilization,  their  families 
and  friends,  who  had  given  their  own  lives  in  the  pur- 
suit of  this  mysterious,  yea,  fruitless  quest.  I  remem- 
bered reading  the  thrilling  tales  of  those  who  re- 
turned— tales  which  had  flushed  me  with  excitement 
and  inspired  me  with  the  same  mad  ambition.  I 
thought  of  the  noble,  indefatigable  efforts  of  these  men, 
of  the  heart-sickening  failures,  in  which  I  too  had 
shared.  And  I  felt  the  indomitable,  swift  surge  of 
their  awful,  goading  determination  within  me — to  sub- 
due the  forces  of  nature,  to  cover  as  Icarus  did  the  air 
those  icy  spaces,  to  reach  the  silver-shining  vacant- 
ness  which  men  called  the  North  Pole. 

As  we  cut  the  shimmering  waters,  I  felt,  as  it  were, 
the  wierd,  unseen  presence  of  those  who  had  died  there 
—died  horribly — men  whose  bodies  had  withered,  with 
slow  suffering,  in  frigid  blasts  and  famine,  who  possibly 
had  prolonged  their  suffering  by  feeding  upon  their  own 
doomed  companions — and  of  others  who  had  perished 
swiftly  in  the  sudden  yawning  of  the  leprous  white 
mouth  of  the  hungry  frozen  sea.  It  is  said  by  some  that 
souls  live  only  after  death  by  the  energy  of  great  emo- 
tions, great  loves,  or  great  ambitions  generated  through- 
out life.  It  seemed  to  me,  in  those  hours  of  intoxica- 


44  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

tion,  that  I  could  feel  the  implacable,  unsatisfied  desire 
of  these  disembodied  things,  who  had  vibrated  with  one 
aim  and  still  yearned  in  the  spirit  for  what  now  they 
were  physically  unable  to  attain.  It  seemed  that  my 
brain  was  fired  with  the  intensity  of  all  these  dead  men's 
ambition,  that  my  heart  in  sympathy  beat  more  turbu- 
lently  with  the  throb  of  their  dead  hearts ;  I  felt  grow- 
ing within  me,  irresistibly,  what  I  did  not  dare,  for  fear 
it  might  not  be  possible,  to  confide  to  Bradley — a  de- 
termination, even  in  the  face  of  peril,  to  essay  the  Pole ! 

From  this  time  onward,  and  until  I  turned  my 
back  upon  the  fruitless  silver-shining  place  of  desola- 
tion at  the  apex  of  the  world,  I  felt  the  intoxication, 
the  intangible  lure  of  the  thing  exhilarating,  buoying 
me  gladsomely,  beating  in  my  heart  with  a  singing 
rhythm.  I  recall  it  now  with  marveling,  and  am  filled 
with  the  pathos  of  it.  Yet,  despite  all  that  I  have 
suffered  since  because  of  it,  I  regret  not  those  en- 
raptured hours  of  perpetual  glitter  of  midnight  suns. 

One  morning  we  reached  the  northern  shore  of 
Melville  Bay,  and  the  bold  cliffs  of  Cape  York  were 
dimly  outlined  through  a  gray  mist.  Strong  southern 
winds  had  carried  such  great  masses  of  ice  against  the 
coast  that  it  was  impossible  to  make  a  near  approach, 
and  as  a  strong  wind  continued,  there  was  such  a  heavy 
sea  along  the  bobbing  line  of  outer  ice  as  to  make  it 
quite  impossible  to  land  and  thence  proceed  toward 
the  shore. 

We  were  desirous  of  meeting  the  natives  of  Cape 
York,  but  these  ice  conditions  forced  us  to  proceed 
without  touching  here,  and  so  we  set  our  course  for  the 
next  of  the  northernmost  villages,  at  North  Star  Bay. 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         45 

By  noon  the  mist  had  vanished,  and  we  saw  clearly  the 
steep  slopes  and  warm  color  of  crimson  cliffs  rising  pre- 
cipitously out  of  the  water.  The  coast  line  is  about  two 
thousand  feet  high,  evidently  the  remains  of  an  old 
tableland  which  extends  a  considerable  distance  north- 
ward. Here  and  there  were  short  glaciers  which  had 
worn  the  cliffs  away  in  their  ceaseless  effort  to  reach 
the  sea.  The  air  was  full  of  countless  gulls,  guillemots, 
little  auks  and  eider-ducks. 

As  the  eye  followed  the  long  and  lofty  line  of 
crimson  cliffs,  there  came  into  sight  a  towering,  conical 
rock,  a  well-known  guidepost  for  the  navigator.  Con- 
tinuing, we  caught  sight  of  the  long  ice  wall  of  Petowik 
Glacier,  and  behind  this,  extending  far  to  the  eastward, 
the  scintillating,  white  expanse  of  the  overland-ice  which 
blankets  the  interior  of  all  Greenland. 

The  small  and  widely  scattered  villages  of  the 
Eskimos  of  this  region  are  hemmed  in  by  the  ice  walls 
of  Melville  Bay  on  the  southward,  the  stupendous 
cliffs  of  Humboldt  Glacier  on  the  north,  an  arm  of  the 
sea  to  the  westward,  and  the  hopelessly  desolate  Green- 
land interior  toward  the  east. 

There  is  really  no  reason  why  many  Eskimos 
should  not  live  here,  for  there  is  abundant  food  in  both 
sea  and  air,  and  even  considerable  game  on  land.  Blue 
and  white  foxes  are  everywhere  to  be  seen.  There  is 
the  seal,  the  walrus,  the  narwhal,  and  the  white  whale. 
There  is  the  white  bear,  monarch  of  the  Polar  wilds, 
who  roams  in  every  direction  over  his  kingdom.  The 
principal  reason  why  the  population  remains  so  small 
lies  in  the  hazardous  conditions  of  life.  Children  are 
highly  prized,  and  a  marriageable  woman  or  girl  who 


46  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

has  one  or  more  of  them  is  much  more  valuable  as  a 
match  than  one  who  is  childless. 

The  coast  line  here  is  paradoxically  curious,  for 
although  the  coast  exceeds  'but  barely  more  than  two 
hundred  miles  of  latitude  it  presents  in  reality  a  sea 
line  of  about  four  thousand  miles  when  the  great  in- 
dentations of  Wolstenholm  Sound,  Inglefield  Gulf, 
and  other  bays,  sounds  and  fiords  are  measured. 

We  sailed  cautiously  now  about  Cape  Atholl, 
which  we  were  to  circle;  a  fog  lay  upon  the  waters, 
almost  entirely  hiding  the  innumerable  icebergs,  and 
making  it  difficult  to  pick  our  course  among  the  danger- 
ous rocks  in  this  vicinity. 

Rounding  Cape  Atholl,  we  sailed  into  Wolsten- 
holm Sound  and  turned  our  prow  toward  the  Eskimo 
village  on  North  Star  Bay. 

North  Star  Bay  is  guarded  by  a  promontory  ex- 
pressively named  Table  Mountain,  "Oomanaq."  As 
we  neared  this  headland,  many  natives  came  out  in 
kayaks  to  meet  us.  Inasmuch  as  I  knew  most  of  them 
personally,  I  felt  a  singular  thrill  of  pleasure  in  seeing 
them.  Years  before,  I  learned  their  simple-hearted 
faithfulness.  Knud  Rasmussen,  a  Danish  writer,  living 
as  a  native  among  the  Eskimos,  apparently  for  the 
sake  of  getting  local  color,  was  in  one  of  the  canoes 
and  came  aboard  the  ship. 

As  it  was  necessary  to  make  slight  repairs  to  the 
schooner,  we  here  had  to  follow  the  primitive  method  of 
docking  by  preliminary  beaching  her.  This  was  done  at 
high  'tide  when  the  propeller,  which  had  been  bent — the 
principal  damage  to  the  ship — was  straightened.  At 
the  same  time  we  gave  the  yacht  a  general  looking-over, 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         47 

and  righted  a  universal  joint  whose  loosening  had  dis- 
abled the  engine. 

Meanwhile  the  launch  kept  busy  scurrying  to  and 
fro,  our  quest  being  occasionally  rewarded  with  eider- 
ducks  or  other  game.  Late  at  night,  a  visit  was  made 
to  the  village  of  Oomanooi.  It  could  hardly  be  called 
a  village,  for  it  consisted  merely  of  seven  triangular 
sealskin  tents,  conveniently  placed  on  picturesque  rocks. 
Gathered  about  these  in  large  numbers,  were  men, 
women  and  children,  shivering  in  the  midnight  chill. 

These  were  odd-looking  specimens  of  humanity; 
In  height,  the  men  averaged  but  five  feet,  two  inches, 
and  the  women  four  feet,  ten.  All  had  broad,  fat  faces, 
heavy  bodies  and  well-rounded  limbs.  Their  skin  was 
slightly  bronzed;  both  men  and  women  had  coal-black 
hair  and  brown  eyes.  Their  noses  were  short,  and  their 
hands  and  feet  short,  but  thick. 

A  genial  woman  was  found  at  every  tent  opening, 
ready  to  receive  visitors  in  due  form.  We  entered  and 
had  a  short  chat  with  each  family.  Subjects  of  con- 
versation were  necessarily  limited,  but  after  all,  they 
were  about  the  same  as  they  would  have  been  in  a 
civilized  region.  We  conversed  as  to  whether  or  not  all 
of  us  had  been  well,  of  deaths,  marriages  and  births. 
Then  we  talked  of  the  luck  of  the  chase,  which  meant 
prosperity  or  need  of  food.  Even  had  it  been  a  civilized 
community,  there  would  have  been  little  questioning  re- 
garding national  or  international  affairs,  because,  in 
such  case,  everyone  reads  the  papers.  Here  there 
was  no  comment  on  such  subjects  simply  because 
nobody  cares  anything  about  them  or  has  any  papers 
to  read. 


48  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

That  a  prominent  Eskimo  named  My-ah  had  dis- 
posed of  a  few  surplus  wives  to  gain  the  means  whereby 
to  acquire  a  few  more  dogs,  was  probably  the  most 
important  single  item  of  information  conveyed.  I  was 
also  informed  that  at  the  present  time  there  happened 
to  be  only  one  other  man  with  two  wives. 

Marriage,  among  these  folk,  is  a  rather  free  and 
easy  institution.  It  is,  indeed,  not  much  more  than  a 
temporary  tie  of  possession.  Men  exchange  partners 
with  each  other  much  in  the  manner  that  men  in  other 
countries  swap  horses.  And  yet,  the  position  of  women 
is  not  so  humble  as  this  custom  might  seem  to  indicate, 
for  they  themselves  are  permitted,  not  infrequently,  to 
choose  new  partners.  These  exceedingly  primitive 
ideas  work  out  surprisingly  well  in  practice  in  these 
isolated  regions,  for  such  exchanges,  when  made,  are 
seemingly  to  the  advantage  and  satisfaction  of  all 
parties;  no  regrets  are  expressed,  and  the  feuds  of 
divorce  courts,  of  alimony  proceedings,  of  damages  for 
alienation  of  affection,  which  prevail  in  so-called  civili- 
zation, are  unknown. 

It  is  certainly  a  curious  thing  that  these  simple 
but  intelligent  people  are  able  to  control  their  own 
destinies  with  a  comfortable  degree  of  success,  although 
they  are  without  laws  or  literature  and  without  any 
fixed  custom  to  regulate  the  matrimonial  bond. 

It  would  seem  as  if  there  ought  to  be  a  large  popu- 
lation, for  there  is  an  average  of  about  three  fat,  clever 
children  for  each  family,  the  youngest  as  a  rule  pictur- 
esquely resting  in  a  pocket  on  the  mother's  back.  But 
the  hardships  of  life  in  this  region  are  such  that  acci- 
dents and  deaths  keep  down  the  population. 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         49 

Each  tent  has  a  raised  platform,  upon  which  all 
sleep.  The  edge  of  this  makes  a  seat,  and  on  each 
side  are  placed  stone  lamps  in  which  blubber  is  burned, 
with  moss  as  a  wick.  Over  this  is  a  drying  rack,  also  a 
few  sticks,  but  there  is  no  other  furniture.  Their  dress 
of  furs  gives  the  Eskimos  a  look  of  savage  fierceness 
which  their  kindly  faces  and  easy  temperament  do  not 
warrant. 

On  board  the  yacht  were  busy  days  of  barter.  Furs 
and  ivory  were  gathered  in  heaps  in  exchange  for  guns, 
knives  and  needles.  Every  seaman,  from  cabin  boy  to 
captain,  suddenly  got  rich  in  the  gamble  of  trade  for 
prized  blue-fox  skins  and  narwhal  tusks. 

The  Eskimos  were  equally  elated  with  their  part 
of  the  bargain.  For  a  beautiful  fox  skin,  of  less  use  to 
a  native  than  a  dog  pelt,  he  could  secure  a  pocket  knife 
that  would  serve  him  half  a  lifetime ! 

A  woman  exchanged  her  fur  pants,  worth  a  hun- 
dred dollars,  for  a  red  pocket  handkerchief  with  which 
she  would  decorate  her  head  or  her  igloo  for  years 
to  come. 

Another  gave  her  bearskin  mits  for  a  few  needles, 
and  she  conveyed  the  idea  that  she  had  the  long  end 
of  the  trade!  A  fat  youth  with  a  fatuous  smile  dis- 
played with  glee  two  bright  tin  cups,  one  for  himself 
and  one  for  his  prospective  bride.  He  was  positively 
happy  in  having  obtained  nine  cents'  worth  of  tin  for 
only  an  ivory  tusk  worth  ninety  dollars ! 

With  the  coming  of  the  midnight  tide  we  lifted 
the  schooner  to  an  even  keel  from  the  makeshift  dry- 
dock  on  the  beach.  She  was  then  towed  out  into  the 
bay  by  the  launch  and  two  dories,  and  anchored. 


50  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Our  first  walrus  adventures  began  in  Wolstenholm 
Sound  during  the  beautiful  nightless  days  of  mid- 
August.  The  local  environment  was  fascinating.  The 
schooner  was  anchored  in  North  Star  Bay,  a  lake  of 
glitter  in  which  wild  men  in  skin  canoes  darted  after 
seals  and  eider-ducks.  On  grassy  shores  were  sealskin 
tents,  about  which  fur-clad  women  and  children  vied 
with  wolf-dogs  for  favorite  positions  to  see  the  queer 
doings  of  white  men.  A  remarkable  landmark  made  the 
place  conspicuous.  A  great  table-topped  rock  rose  sud- 
denly out  of  a  low  foreland  to  an  altitude  of  about  six 
hundred  feet.  About  this  giant  cliff,  gulls,  guillemots 
and  ravens  talked  and  winged  uproariously.  The  rock 
bore  the  native  name  of  Oomanaq.  With  the  unique 
Eskimo  manner  of  name-coining,  the  village  was  called 
Oomanooi. 

Wolstenholm  Sound  is  a  large  land-locked  body  of 
water,  with  arms  reaching  to  the  narrow  gorges  of  the 
overland  sea  of  ice,  from  which  icebergs  tumble  ceas- 
lessly.  The  sparkling  water  reflected  the  surroundings 
in  many  shades  of  blue  and  brown,  relieved  by  strong 
contrasts  of  white  and  black.  On  the  western  sky  line 
were  the  chiseled  walls  of  Acponie  and  other  islands, 
and  beyond  a  steel-gray  mist  in  which  was  wrapped  the 
frozen  sea  of  the  Polar  gateway.  Fleets  of  icebergs 
moved  to  and  fro,  dragging  tails  of  drift  be  jeweled 
with  blue  crystal. 

Far  out — ten  miles  from  our  outlook — there  was 
a  meeting  of  the  currents.  Here,  small  pieces  of  sea- 
ice  slowly  circled  in  an  eddy,  and  upon  them  were  herds 
of  walruses.  We  did  not  see  them,  but  their  shrill  voices 
rang  through  the  icy  air  like  a  wireless  message.  This 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         51 

was  a  call  to  action  which  Mr.  Bradley  could  not  resist, 
and  preparations  were  begun  for  the  combat. 

The  motor  boat — the  most  important  factor  in  the 
chase — had  been  especially  built  for  just  such  an  en- 
counter. Covered  with  a  folding  whale-back  top  en- 
tirely painted  white  to  resemble  ice,  we  had  hoped  to 
hunt  walrus  under  suitable  Arctic  cover. 

Taking  a  white  dory  in  tow,  two  Eskimo  harpoon- 
ers  were  invited  to  follow.  The  natives  in  kayaks  soon 
discovered  to  their  surprise  that  their  best  speed  was  not 
equal  to  ours — for  the  first  time  they  were  beaten  in 
their  own  element.  For  ages  the  Eskimos  had  rested 
secure  in  the  belief  that  the  kayak  was  the  fastest  thing 
afloat.  They  had  been  beaten  by  big  ships,  of  course, 
but  these  had  spiritual  wings  and  did  not  count  in  the 
race  of  man's  craft.  This  little  launch,  however,  with 
its  rapid-fire  gas  explosions,  made  their  eyes  bulge  to 
a  wondering,  wide-open,  seal-like  curiosity.  They 
begged  to  be  taken  aboard  to  watch  the  loading  of  the 
engines ;  they  thought  we  fed  it  with  cartridges. 

After  a  delightful  run  of  an  hour,  a  pan  of  ice 
was  sighted  with  black  hummocks  on  it.  "Ahwek! 
AJiwek!"  the  Eskimos  shouted.  A  similar  sound  floated 
over  the  oily  waters  from  many  walrus  throats.  The 
walruses  were  about  three  miles  to  the  southwest.  At  a 
slower  speed  we  advanced  two  miles  more.  In  the 
meantime  Mr.  Bradley  cleared  the  deck  for  action.  The 
direction  of  the  hunting  tactics  was  now  turned  over 
to  My-ah.  The  mate  was  at  the  wheel.  I  pushed  the 
levers  of  the  gasoline  kicker.  Our  line  of  attack  was 
ordered  at  right  angles  to  the  wind.  As  we  neared  the 
game,  the  engines  were  stopped. 


52  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Looking  through  glasses,  the  sight  of  the  gregari- 
ous herd  made  our  hearts  quicken.  They  were  all 
males  of  tremendous  size,  with  glistening  tusks  with 
which  they  horned  one  another  in  efforts  for  favorable 
positions.  Some  were  asleep,  others  basked  in  the  sun 
with  heads  turning  lazily  from  side  to  side.  Now  and 
then,  they  uttered  sleepy,  low  grunts.  They  were 
quivering  in  a  gluttonous  slumber,  while  the  organs  piled 
up  their  bank  account  of  fat  to  pay  the  costs  of  the 
gamble  of  the  coming  winter  night. 

With  muffled  paddles  the  launch  was  now  silently 
propelled  forward,  while  the  kayaks  stealthily  ad- 
vanced to  deliver  the  harpoons.  The  Eskimo  reason 
for  this  mode  of  procedure  is  based  on  a  careful  study 
of  the  walrus'  habits.  Its  nose  in  sleep  is  always 
pointed  windwards.  Its  ears  are  at  all  times  sensitive 
to  noises  from  every  direction,  while  the  eyes  during 
wakeful  moments  sweep  the  horizon.  But  its  horizon 
is  very  narrow.  Only  the  nose  and  the  ear  sense  the 
distant  alarm.  We  advanced  very  slowly  and  cautiously, 
and  that  only  when  all  heads  were  down.  Our  boat 
slowly  got  within  three  hundred  yards  of  the  herd.  Pre- 
paring their  implements  to  strike,  the  Eskimos  had  ad- 
vanced to  within  fifty  feet.  The  moment  was  tense. 
Of  a  sudden,  a  tumultuous  floundering  sound  smote  the 
air.  The  sleeping  creatures  awoke,  and  with  a  start 
leaped  into  the  sea.  Turning  their  kayaks,  the  Eskimos 
paddled  a  wild  retreat  and  sought  the  security  of.  the 
launch.  The  sport  of  that  herd  was  lost  to  us.  Al- 
though they  darted  about  under  water  in  a  threatening 
manner,  they  only  rose  to  the  surface  at  a  safe  distance. 

Scanning  the  surroundings  with  our  glasses,  about 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         53 

two  miles  to  the  south  another  group  was  sighted. 
This  time  Bradley,  as  the  chief  nimrod,  assumed  direc- 
tion. The  kayaks  and  the  Eskimos  were  placed  in  the 
dory.  Tactics  were  reversed.  Instead  of  creeping  up 
slowly,  a  sudden  rush  was  planned.  No  heed  was  taken 
of  noise  or  wind.  The  carburetor  was  opened,  the  spark 
lever  of  the  magneto  was  advanced  to  its  limit,  and  we 
shot  through  the  waters  like  a  torpedo  boat.  As  we 
neared  the  herd,  the  dory,  with  its  Eskimos,  was  freed 
from  the  launch.  The  Eskimos  were  given  no  instruc- 
tions, and  they  wisely  chose  to  keep  out  of  the  battle. 

As  we  got  to  within  two  hundred  yards,  the  canvas 
top  of  the  launch  fell  and  a  heavy  gun  bombardment 
began.  The  walruses  had  not  had  time  to  wake ;  the  sud- 
denness of  the  onslaught  completely  dazed  them.  One 
after  another  dropped  his  ponderous  head  with  a 
sudden  jerk  as  a  prize  to  the  marksmen,  while  the 
launch,  at  reduced  speed,  encircled  the  walrus-encum- 
bered pan.  Few  escaped.  There  were  heads  and  meat 
and  skins  enough  to  satisfy  all  wants  for  a  long  time 
to  follow.  But  the  game  was  too  easy — the  advantage 
of  an  up-to-date  sportsman  had  been  carried  to  its 
highest  degree  of  perfection.  It  was  otherwise,  how- 
ever, in  the  walrus  battles  that  followed  later — battles 
on  the  success  of  which  depended  the  possibility  of  my 
being  able  to  assail  the  northern  ice  desert,  in  an  effort 
to  reach  the  Polar  goal. 

Oomanooi  was  but  one  of  six  villages  among  which 
the  tribe  had  divided  its  two  hundred  and  fifty  people 
for  the  current  season.  To  study  these  interesting  folk, 
to  continue  the  traffic  and  barter,  and  to  enjoy  for  a 
short  time  the  rare  sport  of  sailing  and  hunting  in  this 


54  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

wild  region,  we  decided  to  visit  as  many  of  the  villages 
as  possible. 

In  the  morning  the  anchor  was  raised  and  we  set 
sail  in  a  light  wind  headed  for  more  northern  villages. 
It  was  a  gray  day,  with  a  quiet  sea.  The  speed  of  the 
yacht  was  not  fast  enough  to  be  exciting,  so  Mr. 
Bradley  suggested  lowering  the  launch  for  a  crack  at 
ducks,  or  a  chase  at  walrus  or  a  drive  at  anything  that 
happened  to  cut  the  waters.  His  harpoon  gun  was 
taken,  as  it  was  hoped  that  a  whale  might  come  our 
way,  but  the  gun  proved  unsatisfactory  and  did  not 
contribute  much  to  our  sport.  In  the  fleet  launch  we 
were  able  to  run  all  around  the  schooner  as  she  slowly 
sailed  over  Wolstenholm  Sound. 

Ducks  were  secured  in  abundance.  Seals  were 
given  chase,  but  they  were  able  to  escape  us.  bearing 
Saunders  Island,  a  herd  of  walruses  was  seen  on  a  pan  of 
drift  ice  far  ahead.  The  magneto  was  pushed,  the 
carburetor  opened,  and  out  we  rushed  after  the  shout- 
ing beasts.  Two,  with  splendid  tusks,  were  obtained, 
and  two  tons  of  meat  and  blubber  were  turned  over  to 
our  Eskimo  allies. 

The  days  of  hunting  proved  quite  strenuous,  and  in 
the  evening  we  were  glad  to  seek  the  comfort  of  our 
cosy  cabin,  after  dining  on  eider-ducks  and  other  game 
delicacies. 

A  few  Eskimos  had  asked  permission  to  accom- 
pany us  to  a  point  farther  north.  Among  them  was  a 
wido w,  to  whom,  for  herself  and  her  children,  we  had 
offered  a  large  bed,  with  straw  in  it,  between  decks,  but 
which,  savage  as  she  was,  she  had  refused,  saying  she 
preferred  the  open  air  on  deck.  There  she  arranged  a 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         55 

den  among  the  anchor  chains,  under  a  shelter  of  seal 
skins. 

In  tears,  she  told  us  the  story  of  her  life,  a  story 
which  offered  a  peep  into  the  tragedy  and  at  the  same 
time  the  essential  comedy  of  Eskimo  existence.  It 
came  in  response  to  a  question  from  me  as  to  how  the 
world  had  used  her,  for  I  had  known  her  years  before. 
At  my  simple  question,  she  buried  her  face  in  her  hands 
and  for  a  time  could  only  mutter  rapidly  and  unin- 
telligibly to  her  two  little  boys.  Then,  between  sobsV 
she  told  me  her  story. 

Ma-nee — such  was  her  name — was  a  descendant  of 
the  Eskimos  of  the  American  side.  A  foreign  belle, 
and,  although  thin,  fair  to  look  upon,  as  Eskimo  beauty 
goes,  her  hand  was  sought  early  by  the  ardent  youths 
of  the  tribe,  who,  truth  to  tell,  look  upon  utility  as  more 
desirable  than  beauty  in  a  wife.  The  heart  of  Ma-nee 
throbbed  to  the  pleadings  of  one  Ik-wa,  a  youth  lithe 
and  brave,  with  brawn  and  sinews  as  resilient  as  rubber 
and  strong  as  steel,  handsome,  dark,  with  flashing  eyes,, 
yet  with  a  heart  as  cruel  as  the  relentless  wind  and  cold 
sea  of  the  North.  Ma-nee  married  Ik-wa  and  bore  to 
him  several  children.  These,  which  meant  wealth  of  the 
most  valuable  kind  (children  even  exceeding  in  value 
dogs,  tusks  and  skins) ,  meant  the  attainment  of  Ik-wa's 
selfish  purpose.  Ma-nee  was  fair,  but  her  hands  were 
not  adroit  with  the  needle,  nor  was  she  fair  in  the 
plump  fashion  desirable  in  wives. 

Ik-wa  met  Ah-tah,  a  good  seamstress,  capable  of 
much  toil,  not  beautiful,  but  round  and  plump.  Where- 
upon, Ik-wa  took  Ah-tah  to  wife,  and  leading  Ma-nee  to 
the  door  of  their  igloo,  ordered  her  to  leave.  Cruel  as 


56  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

can  be  these  natives,  they  also  possess  a  persistence  and 
a  tenderness  that  manifest  themselves  in  strange, 
dramatic  ways.  Ma-nee,  disconsolate  but  brave,  de- 
parted. There  being  at  the  time  a  scarcity  of  marriage- 
able women  in  the  village,  Ma-nee  was  soon  wooed  by 
another,  an  aged  Eskimo,  whose  muscles  had  begun  to 
wither,  whose  eyes  no  longer  flashed  as  did  Ik-wa's, 
but  whose  heart  was  kind.  To  him  Ma-nee  bore  two 
children,  those  which  she  had  with  her  on  deck.  To 
them,  unfortunately,  descended  the  heritage  of  their 
father's  f railities ;  one — now  eight — being  the  only  deaf 
and  dumb  Eskimo  in  all  the  land;  the  other,  the 
younger,  aged  three,  a  weakling  with  a  pinched  and 
pallid  face  and  thin,  gaunt  arms.  Ma-nee's  husband 
was  not  a  good  hunter,  for  age  and  cold  had  sapped  his 
vigor.  Their  home  was  peaceful  if  not  prosperous ;  the 
two  loved  one  another,  and,  because  of  their  defects, 
Ma-nee  grew  to  love  her  little  ones  unwontedly. 

Just  before  the  beginning  of  the  long  winter  night, 
the  old  father,  anxious  to  provide  food  and  deer  skins 
for  the  coming  months  of  continuous  darkness,  ven- 
tured alone  in  search  of  game  among  the  mountains 
of  the  interior.  Day  after  day,  while  the  gloom  de- 
.scended,  Ma-nee,  dry  eyed  waited.  The  aged  father 
never  came  back.  Returning  hunters  finally  brought 
news  that  he  had  perished  alone,  from  a  gun  accident,  in 
the  icy  wilderness,  and  they  had  found  him,  his  frozen, 
mummied  face  peeping  anxiously  from  the  mantle  of 
mow.  Ma-nee  wept  broken-heartedly. 

Ma-nee  gazed  into  the  faces  of  the  two  children 
with  a  wild,  tragic  wistfulness.  By  the  stern  and  in- 
violable law  of  the  Eskimos,  Ma-nee  knew  her  two  be- 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         5T 

loved  ones  were  condemned  to  die.  In  this  land,  where 
food  is  at  a  premium,  and  where  every  helpless  and  de- 
pendent life  means  a  sensible  drain  upon  the  tribe's 
resources,  they  have  evolved  that  Spartan  law  which 
results  in  the  survival  of  only  the  fittest.  The  one  child, 
because  of  its  insufficient  senses,  the  other  because  it 
was  still  on  its  mother's  back  and  under  three  at  the 
time  its  father  died,  and  with  no  father  to  support 
them,  were  doomed.  Kind-hearted  as  the  Eskimos 
naturally  are,  they  can  at  times,  in  the  working  out  of 
that  code  which  means  continued  existence,  be  terribly 
brutal.  Their  fierce  struggle  with  the  elements  for 
very  existence  has  developed  in  them  an  elemental 
fierceness.  From  probable  experience  in  long-past 
losses  of  life  from  contagion,  they  instinctively  destroy 
every  igloo  in  which  a  native  dies,  or,  at  times,  to  save 
the  igloo,  they  heartlessly  seize  the  dying,  and  dragging 
him  through  the  low  door,  cast  him,  ere  breath  has 
ceased,  into  the  life-stilling  outer  world. 

This  inviolable  custom  of  ages  Ma-nee,  with  a 
Spartan  courage,  determined  to  break.  During  the 
long  night  which  had  just  passed,  friends  had  been  kind 
to  Ma-nee,  but  now  that  she  was  defying  Eskimo 
usage,  she  could  expect  no  assistance.  Brutal  as  he 
had  been  to  her,  hopeless  as  seemed  such  prospects, 
Ma-nee  thought  of  the  cruel  Ik-wa  and  determined  to 
go  to  him,  with  the  two  defective  children  of  her  second 
husband,  beg  him  to  accept  them  as  his  own  and  to  take 
her,  as  a  secondary  wife,  a  servant — a  position  of 
humiliation  and  hard  labor.  In  this  determination, 
which  can  be  appreciated  only  by  those  who  know  how 
implacable  and  heartless  the  natives  can  be,  Ma-nee  was 


58  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

showing  one  of  their  marvellous  traits,  that  indomitable 
courage,  persistence  and  dogged  hopefulness  which,  in 
my  two  later  companions,  E-tuk-i-shook  and  Ah-we-lah, 
enabled  them,  with  me,  to  reach  the  Pole. 

I  admired  the  spirit  of  Ma-nee,  and  promised  to 
help  her,  although  the  mission  of  reuniting  the  two 
seemed  dubious. 

Ma-nee  was  not  going  to  Ik-wa  entirely  empty- 
handed,  however,  for  she  possessed  some  positive  wealth 
in  the  shape  of  several  dogs,  and  three  bundles  of  skins 
and  sticks  which  comprised  her  household  furniture. 

We  soon  reached  the  village  where  Ma-nee  was  to 
be  put  ashore.  Very  humbly,  the  heroic  mother  and 
her  two  frail  children  went  to  Ik-wa's  tent.  Ik-wa 
was  absent  hunting,  and  his  wife,  who  had  supplanted 
Ma-nee,  a  fat,  unsociable  creature,  appeared.  Weep- 
ing, Ma-nee  told  of  her  plight  and  begged  for  shelter. 
The  woman  stolidly  listened;  then,  without  a  word, 
turned  her  back  on  the  forlorn  mother  and  entered  her 
tent.  For  the  unintentional  part  we  had  played  she 
gave  us  exceedingly  cold,  frowning  looks  which  were 
quite  expressive. 

Ma-nee  now  went  to  the  other  villagers.  They  lis- 
tened to  her  plans,  and  their  primitive  faces  lighted 
with  sympathy.  I  soon  saw  them  serving  a  pot  of  steam- 
ing oil  meat  in  her  honor — a  feast  in  which  we  were 
urgently  invited  to  partake,  but  which  we,  fortunately, 
found  some  good  excuse  for  avoiding.  Although  she  had 
violated  a  custom  of  the  tribe,  these  people,  both  stern- 
hearted  and  tender,  recognized  the  greatness  of  a 
mother-love  which  had  braved  an  unwritten  law  of  ages, 
and  they  took  her  in.  Several  months  later,  on  a  return 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         59 

to  the  village,  I  saw  Ik-wa  himself.  Although  he  did  not 
thank  me  for  the  unwitting  part  I  had  played  in  their 
reunion,  he  had  taken  Ma-nee  back,  and  near  his  own 
house  was  a  new  igloo  in  which  the  mother  lived  with  her 
children. 

Resuming  our  journey,  a  snow  squall  soon  frosted 
the  deck  of  the  yacht,  and  to  escape  the  icy  air  we  retired 
early  to  our  berths.  During  the  night  the  speed  of  the 
yacht  increased,  and  when  we  appeared  on  deck  again, 
at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  the  rays  of  the  August 
sun  seemed  actually  warm. 

We  passed  the  ice-battered  and  storm-swept  cliffs 
of  Cape  Parry  and  entered  Whale  Sound.  On  a  sea  of 
gold,  strewn  with  ice  islands  of  ultramarine  and  alabas- 
ter, whales  spouted  and  walrus  shouted.  Large  flocks 
of  little  auks  rushed  rapidly  by. 

The  wind  was  light,  but  the  engine  took  us  along  at 
a  pace  just  fast  enough  to  allow  us  to  enjoy  the  superb 
surroundings.  In  the  afternoon  we  were  well  into 
Inglefield  Gulf,  and  near  Itiblu.  There  was  a  strong 
head  wind,  and  enough  ice  about  to  make  us  cautious  in 
our  prospect. 

We  aimed  here  to  secure  Eskimo  guides  and  with 
them  seek  caribou  in  Olrik's  Bay.  While  the  schooner 
was  tacking  for  a  favorable  berth  in  the  drift  off  Kanga, 
the  launch  was  lowered,  and  we  sought  to  interview  the 
Eskimos  of  Itiblu.  The  ride  was  a  wet  one,  for  a  short, 
choppy  sea  poured  icy  spray  over  us  and  tumbled  us 
about. 

There  were  only  one  woman,  a  few  children,  and 
about  a  score  of  dogs  at  the  place.  The  woman  was  a 
remarkably  fast  talker,  long  out  of  practice.  She  told 


60  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

us  that  her  husband  and  the  other  men  were  absent  on  a 
caribou  hunt,  and  then,  with  a  remarkably  rapid  articu- 
lation and  without  a  single  question  from  us,  plunged 
incessantly  on  through  all  the  news  of  the  tribe  for  a 
year.  After  gasping  for  breath  like  a  smothered  seal, 
she  then  began  with  news  of  previous  years  and  a  his- 
tory of  forgotten  ages.  We  started  back  for  the  launch, 
arid  she  invited  herself  to  the  pleasure  of  our  company 
to  the  beach. 

We  had  gone  only  a  few  steps  before  it  occurred  to 
her  that  she  was  in  need  of  something.  Would  we  not 
get  her  a  few  boxes  of  matches  in  exchange  for  a  narwhal 
tusk?  We  should  be  delighted,  and  a  handful  of  sweets 
went  with  the  bargain.  Her  boy  brought  down  two 
ivory  tusks,  each  eight  feet  in  length,  the  two  being 
worth  one  hundred  and  fifty  dollars.  Had  we  a  knife 
to  spare?  Yes;  and  a  tin  spoon  was  also  given,  just  to 
show  that  we  were  liberal. 

The  yacht  was  headed  northward,  across  Inglefield 
Gulf.  With  a  fair  wind,  we  cut  tumbling  seas  of  ebony 
with  a  racing  dash.  Though  the  wind  was  strong,  the 
air  was  remarkably  clear. 

The  great  chiselled  cliffs  of  Cape  Auckland  rose  in 
terraced  grandeur  under  the  midnight  sun.  The  dis- 
tance was  twelve  miles,  and  it  was  twelve  miles  of  sub- 
merged rocks  and  shallow  water. 

It  was  necessary  to  give  Karnah  a  wide  berth. 
There  were  bergs  enough  about  to  hold  the  water  down, 
though  an  occasional  sea  rose  with  a  sickening  thump. 
At  Karnah  we  went  ashore.  There  was  not  a  man  in 
town,  all  being  absent  on  a  distant  hunting  campaign. 
But,  though  there  were  no  men,  the  place  was  far  from 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         61 

being  deserted,  for  five  women,  fifteen  children  and 
forty-five  dogs  came  out  to  meet  us. 

Here  we  saw  five  sealskin  tents  pitched  among  the 
bowlders  of  a  glacial  stream.  An  immense  quantity  of 
narwhal  meat  was  lying  on  the  rocks  and  stones  to  dry. 
Skins  were  stretched  on  the  grass,  and  a  general  air  of 
thrift  was  evidenced  about  the  place.  Bundles  of  seal- 
skins, packages  of  pelts  and  much  ivory  were  brought 
out  to  trade  and  establish  friendly  intercourse.  We 
gave  the  natives  sugar,  tobacco  and  ammunition  in 
quantities  to  suit  their  own  estimate  of  value. 

Would  we  not  place  ourselves  at  ease  and  stay  for 
a  day  or  two,  as  their  husbands  would  soon  return?  We 
were  forced  to  decline  their  hospitality,  for  without  the 
harbor  ihere  was  too  much  wind  to  keep  the  schooner 
waiting.  Eskimos  have  no  salutation  except  a  greeting 
smile  or  a  parting  look  of  regret.  We  got  both  at  the 
same  time  as  we  stepped  into  the  launch  and  shouted 
good-bye. 

The  captain  was  told  to  proceed  to  Cape  Robert- 
son. The  wind  eased,  and  a  descending  fog  soon  blotted 
out  part  of  the  landscape,  horizon  and  sky.  It  hung 
like  a  gray  pall  a  thousand  feet  above  us,  leaving  the  air 
below  this  bright  and  startlingly  clear. 


TO  THE  LIMITS  OF  NAVIGATION 

EXCITING    HUNTS    FOE    GAME    WITH    THE    ESKIMOS AR- 
RIVAL AT   ETAH SBEEDY   TRIP   TO   ANNOATOK,   THE 

WINDY     PLACE,     WHERE    SUPPLIES    ARE    FOUND     IN 

ABUNDANCE EVERYTHING  AUSPICIOUS  FOR  DASH  TO 

THE  POLE DETERMINATION  TO  ESSAY  THE  EFFORT- 
BRADLEY   INFORMED DEBARK   FOR  THE   POLE THE 

YACHT  RETURNS 


IV 


ALONE  WITH  OUR  DESTINY,  SEVEN  HUNDRED  MILES 
FROM  THE  POLE 

We  awoke  off  Cape  Robertson  early  on  August  13, 
and  went  ashore  before  breakfast.  The  picturesque 
coast  here  rises  suddenly  to  an  altitude  of  about  two 
thousand  feet,  and  is  crowned  with  a  gleaming,  silver 
ice  cap.  Large  bays,  blue  glacial  walls  and  prominent 
headlands  give  a  pleasing  variety.  It  is  much  like  the 
coast  of  all  Greenland.  On  its  southern  exposure  the 
eroded  Huronian  rocks  provide  shelter  for  millions  of 
little  auks.  They  dart  incessantly  from  cliff  to  sea  in  a 
chattering  cloud  of  wings.  Rather  rich  and  grassy  ver- 
dure offers  an  oasis  for  the  Arctic  hare,  while  the  blue 
fox  finds  life  easy  here,  for  he  can  fill  his  winter  den 
with  the  fat  feathered  creatures  which  teem  by  millions. 


TO  THE  LIMITS  OF  NAVIGATION  63 

The  Eskimos  profit  by  the  combination,  and  pitch 
their  camp  at  the  foot  of  the  cliffs,  for  the  chase  on  sea 
is  nearly  as  good  here  as  in  other  places,  while  land 
creatures  literally  tumble  into  the  larder. 

As  we  approached  the  shore,  ten  men,  nine  women, 
thirty-one  children  and  one  hundred  and  six  dogs  came 
out  to  meet  us.  I  count  the  children  and  dogs  for  they 
are  equally  important  in  Eskimo  economy.  The  latter 
are  by  far  the  most  important  to  the  average  Caucasian 
in  the  Arctic. 

Only  small  game  had  fallen  to  the  Eskimos'  lot, 
and  they  were  eager  to  venture  out  with  us  after  big 
game.  Mr.  Bradley  gathered  a  suitable  retinue  of 
native  guides,  and  we  weiie  not  long  in  arranging  a 
compact. 

Free  passage,  the  good  graces  of  the  cook,  and  a 
knife  each  were  to  be  their  pay.  A  caribou  hunt  was 
not  sufficiently  novel  to  merit  a  return  to  Olrik's  Bay, 
where  intelligent  hunting  is  always  rewarded,  but  it 
was  hoped  we  might  get  a  hunt  at  Kookaan,  near  the 
head  of  Robertson  Bay.* 

Although  hunting  in  the  bay  was  not  successful 
from  a  practical  standpoint,  it  afforded  exciting  pleas- 


*The  Death  of  John  M.  Verhoeff.— As  we  passed  Robertson  Bay, 
there  came  up  memories  of  the  tragedy  of  Verhoeff.  This  young 
man  was  a  member  of  Peary's  first  expedition,  in  1891.  He  had  paid  $2,000 
toward  the  fund  of  the  expedition.  Verhoeff  was  young  and  enthusiastic. 
He  gave  his  time,  his  money,  and  he  risked  his  life  for  Peary.  He  was 
treated  with  about  the  same  consideration  as  that  accorded  the  Eskimo 
dogs.  When  I  last  saw  him  in  camp,  he  was  in  tears,  telling  of  Peary's 
injustice.  Mrs.  Peary — I  advert  to  this  with  all  possible  reluctance — had 
done  much  to  make  his  life  bitter,  and  over  this  he  talked  for  days. 
Finally  he  said:  "I  will  never  go  home  in  the  same  ship  with  that  man 
and  that  woman."  It  was  the  last  sentence  he  uttered  in  my  hearing. 
He  did  not  go  home  in  that  ship.  Instead,  he  wandered  off  over  the 
glacier,  where  he  left  his  body  in  the  blue  depths  of  a  crevasse. 


64  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

ure  in  perilous  waters.  Even  during  these  hours  of 
sport,  my  mind  was  busy  with  tentative  plans  for  a 
Polar  journey.  Whenever  I  aimed  my  gun  at  a  snort- 
ing walrus,  or  at  some  white- winged  Arctic  bird,  I  felt  a 
thrill  in  the  thought  that  upon  the  skill  of  my  arms,  of 
my  aim,  and  upon  that  of  the  natives  we  were  later  to 
join,  would  depend  the  getting  of  food  sufficient  to  en- 
able me  to  embark  upon  my  dream.  Everything  I  did 
now  began  to  have  some  bearing  upon  this  glorious,  in- 
toxicating prospect;  it  colored  my  life,  day  and  night.  I 
realized  how  easily  I  might  fail  even  should  conditions 
be  favorable  enough  to  warrant  the  journey;  for  this 
reason,  because  of  the  unwelcome  doubt  which  at  times 
chilled  my  enthusiasm,  I  did  not  yet  confide  to  Bradley 
my  growing  ambition. 

Returning  to  the  settlement,  we  paid  our  hunting 
guides,  made  presents  to  the  women  and  children,  and 
set  sail  for  Etah.  An  offshore  breeze  filled  the  big  wings 
of  the  canvas.  As  borne  on  the  back  of  some  great 
white  bird,  we  soared  northward  into  a  limpid  molten 
sea.  From  below  came  the  music  of  our  phonograph, 
curiously  shouting  its  tunes,  classic  and  popular,  in  that 
grim,  golden  region  of  glory  and  death. 

It  is  curious  how  ambition  sets  the  brain  on  fire, 
and  quickens  the  heart  throbs.  As  we  sped  over  the 
magical  waters,  the  wild  golden  air  electric  about  me, 
I  believe  I  felt  an  ecstasy  of  desire  such  as  mystics 
achieved  from  fasting  and  prayer.  It  was  the  surge  of 
an  ambition  which  began  to  grow  mightily  within  mef 
which  I  felt  no  obstacle  could  withstand,  and  which, 
later,  I  believe  carried  me  forward  with  its  wings  of 
faith  when  my  body  well  nigh  refused  to  move.  We 


TO  THE  LIMITS  OF  NAVIGATION  65 

passed  Cape  Alexander  and  entered  Smith  Sound.  We 
sped  by  storm-chiselled  cliffs,  whereupon  the  hand  of 
nature  had  written  a  history,  unintelligible  to  humans, 
as  with  a  pen  of  iron.  The  sun  was  low.  Great  bergs 
loomed  up  in  the  radiant  distance,  and  reflecting  silver- 
shimmering  halos,  seemed  to  me  as  the  silver-winged 
ghosts  of  those  who  died  in  this  region  and  who  were 
borne  alone  on  the  wind  and  air. 

Nature  seemed  to  sing  with  exultation.  Approach- 
ing a  highland  of  emerald  green  and  seal  brown,  I  heard 
the  wild  shouting  of  hawks  from  the  summit,  and  from 
below  the  shrill  chattering  of  millions  of  auks  with  baby 
families.  And  nearer,  from  the  life  enraptured  waters, 
the  minor  note  of  softly  cooing  ducks  and  mating  guil- 
lemots. From  the  interior  land  of  ice,  rising  above  the 
low  booming  of  a  sapphire  glacier  moving  majestically 
to  the  sea,  rang  the  bark  of  foxes,  the  shrill  notes  of  the 
ptarmigan,  and  from  an  invisible  farther  distance  the 
raucous  wolf  howl  of  Eskimo  dogs. 

Before  us,  at  times,  would  come  a  burst  of  spouting 
spray,  and  a  whale  would  rise  to  the  surface  of  the  sea. 
Nearby,  on  a  floating  island  of  ice,  mother  walrus  would 
soothingly  murmur  to  her  babies.  From  invisible 
places  came  the  paternal  voices  of  the  oogzook,  and  as 
we  went  forward,  seals,  white  whales  and  unicorns  ap- 
peared, speaking  perhaps  the  sign  language  of  the 
animal  deaf  and  dumb  in  the  blue  submarine. 

Occasionally,  there  was  an  explosion,  when 
thunder  as  from  a  hundred  cannons  echoed  from  cliff  to 
cliff.  A  berg  was  shattered  to  ruins.  Following  this 
would  rise  the  frightened  voices  of  every  animal  above 
water.  Now  and  then,  from  ultramarine  grottoes  issued 


66  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

weird,  echoing  sounds,  and  almost  continually  rising  to 
ringing  peals  and  shuddering  into  silence,  reiterant,  in- 
cessant, came  nature's  bugle-calls — calls  of  the  wind, 
of  sundering  glaciers,  of  sudden  rushes  of  ice  rivers,  of 
exploding  gases  and  of  disintegrating  bergs.  With 
those  sounds  pealing  in  our  ears  clarion-like,  we  entered 
the  "Gates  of  Hades,"  the  Polar  gateway,  bound  for 
the  harbor  where  the  last  fringe  of  the  world's  humanity 
straggles  finally  up  on  the  globe. 

As  we  entered  Foulke  Fiord,  half  a  gale  came 
from  the  sea.  We  steered  for  the  settlement  of 
Etah.  A  tiny  settlement  it  was,  for  it  was  com- 
posed of  precisely  four  tents,  which  for  this  sea- 
son, had  been  pitched  beside  a  small  stream,  just 
inside  of  the  first  projecting  point  on  the  north  shore. 
Inside  this  point  there  was  sheltered  water  for  the 
Eskimo's  kayaks,  and  it  also  made  a  good  harbor  for  the 
schooner.  It  is  possible  in  favorable  seasons  to  push 
through  Smith  Sound,  over  Kane  Basin,  into  Kennedy 
Channel,  but  the  experiment  is  always  at  the  risk  of  the 
vessel. 

So,  as  there  was  no  special  reasons  for  us  to  hazard 
life  in  making  this  attempt,  we  decided  to  prepare  the 
schooner  here  for  the  return  voyage. 

These  preparations  would  occupy  several  days. 
We  determined  to  spend  as  much  of  this  time  as  pos- 
sible in  sport,  since  much  game  abounded  in  this  region. 
Before  we  landed  we  watched  the  Eskimos  harpoon  a 
white  whale.  There  were  no  unexplored  spots  in  this 
immediate  vicinity,  as  both  Doctor  Kane  and  Doctor 
Hayes,  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  had  been 
thoroughly  over  the  ground.  The  little  auks  kept  us 


TO  THE  LIMITS  OF  NAVIGATION  67 

busy  for  a  day  after  our  arrival,  while  hares,  tumbling 
like  snowballs  over  wind-polished,  Archaean  rocks,  gave 
another  day  of  gun  recreation.  Far  beyond,  along  the 
inland  ice,  were  caribou,  but  we  preferred  to  confine  our 
hunting  to  the  seashore.  The  bay  waters  were  alive 
with  eider-ducks  and  guillemots,  while,  just  outside, 
walruses  dared  us  to  venture  in  open  contest  on  the 
wind-swept  water. 

After  satisfying  our  desire  for  the  hunt,  we  pre- 
pared to  start  for  Annoatok,  twenty-five  miles  to  the 
northward.  This  is  the  northernmost  settlement  of  the 
globe,  a  place  beyond  which  even  the  hardy  Eskimos 
attempt  nothing  but  brief  hunting  excursions,  and 
where,  curiously,  money  is  useless  because  it  has  no 
value. 

We  decided  to  go  in  the  motor  boat,  so  the  tanks 
were  filled  with  gasoline  and  suitable  food  and  camp 
equipment  were  loaded.  On  the  morning  of  August  24, 
we  started  for  Annoatok. 

It  was  a  beautiful  day.  The  sun  glowed  in  a  sky 
<nf  Italian  blue.  A  light  air  crossed  the  sea,  which 
glowed  dully,  like  ground  glass.  Passing  inside  of 
Littleton  Island,  we  searched  for  relics  along  Life- 
boat Cove.  There  the  Polaris  was  stranded  in  a  sinking 
condition  in  1872,  with  fourteen  men  on  board.  The 
desolate  cliffs  of  Cape  Hatherton  were  a  midsummer 
blaze  of  color  and  light  that  contrasted  strongly  with 
the  cold  blue  of  the  many  towering  bergs. 

As  we  went  swiftly  past  the  series  of  wind-swept 
headlands,  the  sea  and  air  became  alive  with  seals,  wal- 
ruses and  birds.  We  did  little  shooting  as  we  were 
eagerly  bent  on  reaching  Annoatok. 


68  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

As  we  passed  the  sharp  rocks  of  Cairn  Point,  we 
saw  a  cluster  of  nine  tents  on  a  small  bay  under  Cape 
Inglefield. 

"Look,  look!  There  is  Annoatok!"  cried  Tung-we, 
our  native  guide.  Looking  farther,  we  saw  that  the 
entire  channel  beyond  was  blocked  with  a  jam  of  ice. 
Fortunately  we  were  able  to  take  our  boat  as  far  as 
we  desired.  A  perpendicular  cliff  served  as  a  pier  to 
which  to  fasten  it.  Here  it  could  rise  and  fall  with  the 
tide,  and  in  little  danger  from  drifting  ice. 

Ordinarily,  Annoatok  is  a  town  of  only  a  single 
family  or  perhaps  two,  but  we  found  it  unusually  large 
and  populous,  for  the  best  hunters  had  gathered  here 
for  the  winter  bear  hunt.  Their  summer  game  catch 
had  been  very  lucky.  Immense  quantities  of  meat  were 
strewn  along  the  shore,  under  mounds  of  stone.  More 
than  a  hundred  dogs,  the  standard  by  which  Eskimo 
prosperity  is  measured,  yelped  a  greeting,  and  twelve 
long-haired,  wild  men  came  out  to  meet  us  as  friends. 

It  came  strongly  to  me  that  this  was  the  spot  to 
make  the  base  for  a  Polar  dash.  Here  were  Eskimo 
helpers,  strong,  hefty  natives  from  whom  I  could  select 
the  best  to  accompany  me ;  here,  by  a  fortunate  chance, 
were  the  best  dog  teams ;  here  were  plenty  of  furs  for 
clothing;  and  here  was  unlimited  food.  These  supplies, 
combined  with  supplies  on  the  schooner,  would  give  all 
that  was  needed  for  the  campaign.  Nothing  could  have 
been  more  ideal. 

For  the  past  several  days,  having  realized  the 
abundance  of  game  and  the  auspicious  weather,  I  had 
thought  more  definitely  of  making  a  dash  for  the  Pole. 
With  all  conditions  in  my  favor,  might  I  not,  by  one 


TO  THE  LIMITS  OF  NAVIGATION  69 

powerful  effort,  achieve  the  thing  that  had  haunted  me 
for  years?  My  former  failures  dogged  me.  If  I  did 
not  try  now,  it  was  a  question  if  an  opportunity  should 
ever  again  come  to  me. 

Now  every  condition  was  auspicious  for  the  effort. 
I  confess  the  task  seemed  audacious  almost  to  the  verge 
of  impossibility.  But,  with  all  these  advantages  so 
fortunately  placed  in  my  hands,  it  took  on  a  new  and 
almost  weird  fascination.  My  many  years  of  school- 
ing in  both  Polar  zones  and  in  mountaineering  would 
now  be  put  to  their  highest  test. 

Yes,  I  would  try,  I  told  myself ;  I  believed  I  should 
succeed.  I  informed  Mr.  Bradley  of  my  determination. 
He  was  not  over-optimistic  about  success,  but  he  shook 
my  hand  and  wished  me  luck.  From  his  yacht  he 
volunteered  food,  fuel,  and  other  supplies,  for  local 
camp  use  and  trading,  for  which  I  have  been  thankful. 

"Annoatok"  means  "a  windy  place."  There  is  really 
nothing  there  to  be  called  a  harbor;  but  we  now  planned 
to  bring  the  schooner  to  this  point  and  unload  her 
on  the  rocky  shore,  a  task  not  unattended  with  danger. 
However,  the  base  had  to  be  made  somewhere  here- 
about, as  Etah  itself  is  still  more  windy  than  Annoatok. 
Moreover,  at  Etah  the  landing  is  more  difficult,  and  it 
was  not  nearly  so  convenient  for  my  purpose  as  a  base. 

Besides,  there  were  gathered  at  Annoatok,  as  I 
have  described,  with  needed  food  and  furs  in  abundance, 
the  best  Eskimos*  in  all  Greenland,  from  whom,  by 


*Before  he  sailed  on  his  last  Northern  expedition  Mr.  Peary,  learning 
that  I  had  preceded  him,  took  the  initial  step  in  his  campaign  to  discredit 
me  by  issuing  a  statement  to  the  effect  that  I  was  bent  upon  the  unfair 
and  dishonest  purpose  of  enlisting  in  my  aid  Eskimos  which  he  had  the 
exclusive  right  to  command.  Mr.  Peary's  attitude  that  the  Eskimos, 


70  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

reason  of  the  rewards  from  civilization  which  I  could 
give  them,  such  as  knives,  guns,  ammunition,  old  iron, 
needles  and  matches,  I  could  select  a  party  more  effi- 
cient, because  of  their  persistence,  tough  fibre,  courage 
and  familiarity  with  Arctic  traveling,  than  any  party 
of  white  men  could  be. 

The  possible  combination  of  liberal  supplies  and 
valiant  natives  left  absolutely  nothing  to  be  desired  to 
insure  success,  so  far  as  preliminaries  were  concerned. 
It  was  only  necessary  that  good  health,  endurable 
weather  and  workable  ice  should  follow.  The  expendi- 
ture of  a  million  dollars  could  not  have  placed  an  ex- 
pedition at  a  better  advantage.  The  opportunity  was 
too  good  to  be  lost.  We  therefore  returned  to  Etah  to 
prepare  for  the  quest. 

At  Etah,  practically  everything  that  was  to  be 
landed  at  Annoatok  was  placed  on  deck,  so  that  the 
dangerous  stop  beside  the  rocks  of  Annoatok  could  be 
made  a  brief  one.  The  ship  was  prepared  for  the  con- 
tingency of  a  storm. 

Late  in  the  evening  of  August  26,  the  entire 
population  of  Etah  was  taken  aboard,  the  anchor  was 

because  he  had  given  them  guns,  powder  and  needles,  belong  to  him,  is  as 
absurd  as  his  pretension  to  the  sole  ownership  of  the  North  Pole.  Al- 
though Mr.  Peary  had  spent  about  a  quarter  of  a  century  essaying  the 
task  by  means  of  luxurious  expeditions,  he  had  done  little  more  than  other 
explorers  and  did  not,  in  my  opinion,  either  secure  an  option  on  the  Pole 
or  upon  the  services  of  the  natives.  In  giving  guns,  etc.,  to  the  natives 
he  also  did  no  more  than  other  explorers,  and  the  Danes  for  many  years, 
have  done.  Nor  was  this  with  him  a  magnanimous  matter  of  gracious 
bounty,  for,  in  prodigal  return  for  all  he  gave  them,  Mr.  Peary  on  every 
expedition  secured  a  fortune  in  furs  and  ivory.  The  Eskimos  belong  to  no 
one.  For  ages  they  have  worked  out  their  rigorous  existence  without 
the  aid  of  white  men,  and  Mr.  Peary's  pretension  becomes  not  only 
absurd  but  grotesque  when  one  realizes  that  following  the  arrival  of  ships 
with  white  crews,  the  natives  have  fallen  easy  victims  of  loathsome 
epidemics,  mostly  ef  a  specific  nature,  for  which  the  trivial  gifts  of  any 
explorer  would  ill  repay  them. 


TO  THE  LIMITS  OF  NAVIGATION  71 

tripped,  and  soon  the  Bradley's  bow  put  out  on  the 
waters  of  Smith  Sound  for  Annoatok.  The  night  was 
coid  and  clear,  brightened  by  the  charm  of  color.  The 
sun  had  just  begun  to  dip  under  the  northern  horizon, 
which  marks  the  end  of  the  summer  double  days  of 
splendor  and  begins  the  period  of  storms  leading  into 
the  long  night.  Early  in  the  morning  we  were  off 
Annoatok. 

The  launch  and  all  the  dories  were  lowered  and 
filled.  Eskimo  boats  were  pressed  into  service  and 
loaded.  The  boats  were  towed  ashore.  Only  a  few 
reached  Annoatok  itself,  for  the  wind  increased  and  a 
troublesome  sea  made  haste  a  matter  of  great  im- 
portance. Things  were  pitched  ashore  anywhere  on 
the  rocks  where  a  landing  could  be  found  for  the  boats. 

The  splendid  efficiency  of  the  launch  proved  equal 
to  the  emergency,  and  in  the  course  of  about  thirteen 
hours  all  was  safely  put  on  shore  in  spite  of  dangerous 
winds  and  forbidding  seas.  That  the  goods  were  spread 
along  the  shore  for  a  distance  of  several  miles  did  not 
much  matter,  for  the  Eskimos  willingly  and  promptly 
carried  them  to  the  required  points. 

Now  the  time  had  come  for  the  return  of  the 
schooner  to  the  United  States.  Unsafe  to  remain 
longer  at  Annoatok  at  this  advanced  stage  of  the  season, 
it  was  also  imperative  that  it  go  right  on  with  barely  a 
halt  at  any  other  place.  The  departure  meant  a  com- 
plete severance  between  the  civilized  world  and  myself. 
But  I  do  not  believe,  looking  back  upon  it,  that  the  situ- 
ation seemed  as  awesome  as  might  be  supposed.  Other 
explorers  had  been  left  alone  in  the  Northland,  and  I 
had  been  through  the  experience  before. 


72  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

The  party,  so  far  as  civilized  men  were  concerned, 
was  to  be  an  unusually  small  one.  That,  however,  was 
not  from  lack  of  volunteers,  for  when  I  had  announced 
my  determination  many  of  the  crew  had  volunteered  to 
accompany  me.  Captain  Bartlett  himself  wished  to  go 
along,  but  generously  said  that  if  it  seemed  necessary 
for  him  to  go  back  with  the  schooner,  he  would  need 
only  a  cook  and  engineer,  leaving  the  other  men 
with  me. 

I  wanted  only  one  white  companion,  however,  for 
I  knew  that  no  group  of  white  men  could  possibly 
match  the  Eskimos  in  their  own  element.  I  had  the 
willing  help  of  all  the  natives,  too,  at  my  disposal. 
More  than  that  was  not  required.  I  made  an  agree- 
ment with  them  for  their  assistance  throughout  the 
winter  in  getting  ready,  and  then  for  as  many  as  I 
wanted  to  start  with  me  toward  the  uttermost  North. 
For  my  white  companion  I  selected  Rudolph  Francke, 
now  one  of  the  Arctic  enthusiasts  on  the  yacht.  He 
had  shipped  for  the  experience  of  an  Arctic  trip.  He 
was  a  cultivated  young  German  with  a  good  scientific 
schooling.  He  was  strong,  goodnatured,  and  his  heart 
was  in  the  prospective  work.  These  were  the  qualities 
which  made  him  a  very  useful  man  as  my  sole 
companion. 

Early  on  the  morning  of  September  3,  I  bade  fare- 
well to  Mr.  Bradley,  and  not  long  afterward  the  yacht 
moved  slowly  southward  and  faded  gradually  into  the 
distant  southern  horizon.  I  was  left  alone  with  my  des- 
tiny, seven  hundred  miles  from  the  Pole. 


BEGINNING    PREPARATIONS    FOR    THE 
POLAR  DASH 

THE  ARCTIC  SOLITUDE — RETROSPECTION  AND  INTROSPEC- 
TION  THE  DETERMINATION  TO  ACHIEVE PLAN- 
NING OUT  THE  DETAILS  OF  THE  CAMPAIGN AN 

ENTIRE  TRIBE  BUSILY  AT  WORK 

V 

THE  POLE,  THE  ROUTE,  AND  THE  INCENTIVE 

When  the  yacht  disappeared  I  felt  a  poignant 
pang  at  my  heart.  After  it  had  faded,  I  stood  gazing 
blankly  at  the  sky,  and  I  felt  the  lure  of  the  old  world. 
The  yacht  was  going  home — to  the  land  of  my  family 
and  friends.  I  was  now  alone,  and,  with  the  exception 
of  Francke,  there  was  no  white  man  among  this  tribe 
of  wild  people  with  whom  to  converse  during  the  long 
Arctic  night  that  was  approaching.  I  knew  I  should 
not  be  lonely,  for  there  was  a  tremendous  lot  of  work  to 
do,  although  I  had  unstinted  assistance.  In  every  de- 
tail, the  entire  six  months  of  labor  including  the  catching 
of  animals,  the  drying  of  meat,  the  making  of  such 
clothes  and  sledges  as  would  be  necessary,  and  the  test- 
ing of  them,  would  have  to  be  managed  by  myself. 
Turning  from  the  rocky  highland  where  I  stood,  a  wild 
thrill  stirred  my  heart.  The  hour  of  my  opportunity 


74-  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

had  come.  After  years  of  unavailing  hopes  and  de- 
pressing defeats  my  final  chance  was  presented!  In 
the  determination  to  succeed,  every  drop  of  blood  in  my 
body,  every  fibre  of  me  responded. 

Why  did  I  desire  so  ardently  to  reach  the  North 
Pole?  What  did  I  hope  to  gain?  What,  if  successful, 
did  I  expect  to  reap  as  the  result  of  my  dreams  ?  These 
questions  since  have  been  asked  by  many.  I  have 
searched  the  chambers  of  my  memory  and  have  tried  to 
resolve  replies  to  myself.  The  attaining  of  the  North 
Pole  meant  at  the  time  simply  the  accomplishing  of  a 
splendid,  unprecedented  feat — a  feat  of  brain  and 
muscle  in  which  I  should,  if  successful,  signally  sur- 
pass other  men.  In  this  I  was  not  any  more  inordi- 
nately vain  or  seekf ul  of  glory  than  one  who  seeks  pre- 
eminence in  baseball,  running  tournaments,  or  any  other 
form  of  athletics  or  sport. 

At  the  time,  any  applause  which  the  world  might 
give,  should  I  succeed,  did  not  concern  me;  I  knew 
that  this  might  come,  but  it  did  not  enter  into  my 
speculations. 

For  years  I  had  felt  the  lure  of  the  silver  glamor 
of  the  North,  and  I  can  explain  this  no  more  than  the 
reason  why  a  poet  is  driven  to  express  himself  in  verse, 
or  why  one  child  preternaturally  develops  amazing  pro- 
ficiency in  mathematics  and  another  in  music.  Certain 
desires  are  born  or  unconsciously  developed  in  us.  I, 
with  others  before  me,  found  my  life  ambition  in  the 
conquest  of  the  Pole.  To  reach  it  would  mean,  I  knew, 
an  exultation  which  nothing  else  in  life  could  give. 

This  imaginary  spot  held  for  me  the  revealing  of 
no  great  scientific  secrets.  I  never  regarded  the  feat 


PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  POLAR  DASH    75 

as  of  any  great  scientific  value.  The  real  victory  would 
lie,  not  in  reaching  the  goal  itself,  but  in  overcoming 
the  obstacles  which  exist  in  the  way  of  it.  In  the  battle 
with  these  I  knew  there  would  be  excitement,  danger, 
necessary  expedients  to  tax  the  brain  and  heroic  feats 
to  tax  the  muscles,  the  ever  constant  incentive  which 
the  subduing  of  one  difficulty  after  another  excites. 

During  the  first  day  at  Annoatok,  after  the  yacht 
left,  I  thought  of  the  world  toward  which  it  was  going, 
of  the  continents  to  the  south  of  me,  of  the  cities  with 
their  teeming  millions,  and  of  the  men  with  their  mul- 
titudinous, conflicting  ambitions.  I  could  see,  In  my 
mind,  the  gigantic  globe  of  my  world  swinging  in  cloud- 
swept  emerald  spaces,  and  far  in  the  remote,  vast,  white 
regions  in  the  north  of  it,  far  from  the  haunts  of  men, 
thousands  of  miles  from  its  populous  cities,  beyond  the 
raging  of  its  blue-green  seas,  myself,  alone,  a  wee,  small 
atom  on  its  vast  surface,  striving  to  reach  its  hitherto 
unattained  goal.  I  felt,  as  I  thought  of  my  anticipa- 
tion and  lonely  quest,  a  sense  of  the  terrible  over- 
whelming hugeness  of  the  earth,  and  the  poignant 
loneliness  any  soul  must  feel  when  it  embarks  upon 
some  splendid  solitary  destiny. 

Beyond  and  above  me  I  visioned  the  unimaginable, 
blinding  white  regions  of  ice  and  cold,  about  which,  like 
a  golden-crowned  sentinel,  with  face  of  flame,  the 
circling  midnight  sun  kept  guard.  Upon  this  desolate, 
awe-inspiring  stage — unchanged  since  the  days  of  its 
designing — I  saw  myself  attempting  to  win  in  the  most 
spectacular  and  difficult  marathon  for  the  testing  of 
human  strength,  courage  and  perseverance,  of  body 
and  brain,  which  God  has  offered  to  man.  I  could  see 


76  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

myself,  in  my  fancy  pictures,  invading  those  roaring 
regions,  struggling  over  icy  lands  in  the  dismal  twilight 
of  the  Arctic  morning,  and  venturing,  with  a  few  com- 
panions, upon  the  lifeless,  wind-swept  Polar  sea.  A 
black  mite,  I  saw  myself  slowly  piercing  those  white 
and  terrible  spaces,  braving  terrific  storms,  assailing 
green,  adamantine  barriers  of  ice,  crossing  the  swift- 
flowing,  black  rivers  of  those  ice  fields,  and  stoutly  per- 
sisting until,  successful,  I  stood  alone,  a  victor,  upon  the 
world's  pinnacle! 

This  thought  gave  me  wild  joy.  That  I,  one  white 
man,  might  alone  succeed  in  this  quest  gave  me  an  im- 
petus which  only  single-handed  effort  and  the  prospect 
of  single-handed  success  can  give.  There  was  pleasure 
in  the  thought  that,  in  this  effort,  I  was  indebted  to  no 
one ;  no  one  had  expended  money  for  me  or  my  trip ;  no 
white  men  were  to  risk  their  lives  with  me.  Whether 
it  resulted  in  success  or  defeat,  I  alone  should  exult  or 
I  alone  should  suffer.  I  was  the  mascot  of  no  clique  of 
friends,  nor  the  pawn  of  scientists  who  might  find  a 
suppositions  and  mythical  glory  in  the  reflected  light  of 
another's  achievement.  The  quest  was  personal;  the 
pleasure  of  success  must' be  personal. 

Yet,  I  want  you  to  understand  this  thing  was  no 
casual  jaunt  with  me.  All  my  life  hinged  about  it,  my 
hopes  were  bent  upon  it;  the  doing  of  it  was  part  of 
me.  My  plans  of  action  were  not  haphazard  and  hair- 
brained.  Logically  and  clearly,  I  mapped  out  a  cam- 
paign. It  was  based  upon  experience  in  known  con- 
ditions, experience  gathered  after  years  of  discourage- 
ment and  failure. 

At    Annoatok   we    erected    a    house    of    packing 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         45 

By  noon  the  mist  had  vanished,  and  we  saw  clearly  the 
steep  slopes  and  warm  color  of  crimson  cliffs  rising  pre- 
cipitously out  of  the  water.  The  coast  line  is  about  two 
thousand  feet  high,  evidently  the  remains  of  an  old 
tableland  which  extends  a  considerable  distance  north- 
ward. Here  and  there  were  short  glaciers  which  had 
worn  the  cliffs  away  in  their  ceaseless  effort  to  reach 
the  sea.  The  air  was  full  of  countless  gulls,  guillemots, 
little  auks  and  eider-ducks. 

As  the  eye  followed  the  long  and  lofty  line  of 
crimson  cliffs,  there  came  into  sight  a  towering,  conical 
rock,  a  well-known  guidepost  for  the  navigator.  Con- 
tinuing, we  caught  sight  of  the  long  ice  wall  of  Petowik 
Glacier,  and  behind  this,  extending  far  to  the  eastward, 
the  scintillating,  white  expanse  of  the  overland-ice  which 
blankets  the  interior  of  all  Greenland. 

The  small  and  widely  scattered  villages  of  the 
Eskimos  of  this  region  are  hemmed  in  by  the  ice  walls 
of  Melville  Bay  on  the  southward,  the  stupendous 
cliffs  of  Humboldt  Glacier  on  the  north,  an  arm  of  the 
sea  to  the  westward,  and  the  hopelessly  desolate  Green- 
land interior  toward  the  east. 

There  is  really  no  reason  why  many  Eskimos 
should  not  live  here,  for  there  is  abundant  food  in  both 
sea  and  air,  and  even  considerable  game  on  land.  Blue 
and  white  foxes  are  everywhere  to  be  seen.  There  is 
the  seal,  the  walrus,  the  narwhal,  and  the  white  whale. 
There  is  the  white  bear,  monarch  of  the  Polar  wilds, 
who  roams  in  every  direction  over  his  kingdom.  The 
principal  reason  why  the  population  remains  so  small 
lies  in  the  hazardous  conditions  of  life.  Children  are 
highly  prized,  and  a  marriageable  woman  or  girl  who 


46  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

has  one  or  more  of  them  is  much  more  valuable  as  a 
match  than  one  who  is  childless. 

The  coast  line  here  is  paradoxically  curious,  for 
although  the  coast  exceeds  but  barely  more  than  two 
hundred  miles  of  latitude  it  presents  in  reality  a  sea 
line  of  about  four  thousand  miles  when  the  great  in- 
dentations of  Wolstenholm  Sound,  Inglefield  Gulf, 
and  other  bays,  sounds  and  fiords  are  measured. 

We  sailed  cautiously  now  about  Cape  Atholl, 
which  we  were  to  circle;  a  fog  lay  upon  the  waters, 
almost  entirely  hiding  the  innumerable  icebergs,  and 
making  it  difficult  to  pick  our  course  among  the  danger- 
ous rocks  in  this  vicinity. 

Rounding  Cape  Atholl,  we  sailed  into  Wolsten- 
holm Sound  and  turned  our  prow  toward  the  Eskimo 
village  on  North  Star  Bay. 

North  Star  Bay  is  guarded  by  a  promontory  ex- 
pressively named  Table  Mountain,  "Oomanaq."  As 
we  neared  this  headland,  many  natives  came  out  in 
kayaks  to  meet  us.  Inasmuch  as  I  knew  most  of  them 
personally,  I  felt  a  singular  thrill  of  pleasure  in  seeing 
them.  Years  before,  I  learned  their  simple-hearted 
faithfulness.  Knud  Rasmussen,  a  Danish  writer,  living 
as  a  native  among  the  Eskimos,  apparently  for  the 
sake  of  getting  local  color,  was  in  one  of  the  canoes 
and  came  aboard  the  ship. 

As  it  was  necessary  to  make  slight  repairs  to  the 
schooner,  we  here  had  to  follow  the  primitive  method  of 
docking  by  preliminary  beaching  her.  This  was  done  at 
high  tide  when  the  propeller,  which  had  been  bent — the 
principal  damage  to  the  ship — was  straightened.  At 
the  same  time  we  gave  the  yacht  a  general  looking-over, 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         47 

and  righted  a  universal  joint  whose  loosening  had  dis- 
abled the  engine. 

Meanwhile  the  launch  kept  busy  scurrying  to  and 
fro,  our  quest  being  occasionally  rewarded  with  eider- 
ducks  or  other  game.  Late  at  night,  a  visit  was  made 
to  the  village  of  Oomanooi.  It  could  hardly  be  called 
a  village,  for  it  consisted  merely  of  seven  triangular 
sealskin  tents,  conveniently  placed  on  picturesque  rocks. 
Gathered  about  these  in  large  numbers,  were  men, 
women  and  children,  shivering  in  the  midnight  chill. 

These  were  odd-looking  specimens  of  humanity. 
In  height,  the  men  averaged  but  five  feet,  two  inches, 
and  the  women  four  feet,  ten.  All  had  broad,  fat  faces, 
heavy  bodies  and  well-rounded  limbs.  Their  skin  was 
slightly  bronzed;  both  men  and  women  had  coal-black 
hair  and  brown  eyes.  Their  noses  were  short,  and  their 
hands  and  feet  short,  but  thick. 

A  genial  woman  was  found  at  every  tent  opening,, 
ready  to  receive  visitors  in  due  form.  We  entered  and 
had  a  short  chat  with  each  family.  Subjects  of  con- 
versation were  necessarily  limited,  but  after  all,  they 
were  about  the  same  as  they  would  have  been  in  a 
civilized  region.  We  conversed  as  to  whether  or  not  all 
of  us  had  been  well,  of  deaths,  marriages  and  births. 
Then  we  talked  of  the  luck  of  the  chase,  which  meant 
prosperity  or  need  of  food.  Even  had  it  been  a  civilized 
community,  there  would  have  been  little  questioning  re- 
garding national  or  international  affairs,  because,  in 
such  case,  everyone  reads  the  papers.  Here  there 
was  no  comment  on  such  subjects  simply  because 
nobody  cares  anything  about  them  or  has  any  papers 
to  read. 


48  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

That  a  prominent  Eskimo  named  My-ah  had  dis- 
posed of  a  few  surplus  wives  to  gain  the  means  whereby 
to  acquire  a  few  more  dogs,  was  probably  the  most 
important  single  item  of  information  conveyed.  I  was 
also  informed  that  at  the  present  time  there  happened 
to  be  only  one  other  man  with  two  wives. 

Marriage,  among  these  folk,  is  a  rather  free  and 
easy  institution.  It  is,  indeed,  not  much  more  than  a 
temporary  tie  of  possession.  Men  exchange  partners 
with  each  other  much  in  the  manner  that  men  in  other 
countries  swap  horses.  And  yet,  the  position  of  women 
is  not  so  humble  as  this  custom  might  seem  to  indicate, 
for  they  themselves  are  permitted,  not  infrequently,  to 
choose  new  partners.  These  exceedingly  primitive 
ideas  work  out  surprisingly  well  in  practice  in  these 
isolated  regions,  for  such  exchanges,  when  made,  are 
seemingly  to  the  advantage  and  satisfaction  of  all 
parties;  no  regrets  are  expressed,  and  the  feuds  of 
divorce  courts,  of  alimony  proceedings,  of  damages  for 
alienation  of  affection,  which  prevail  in  so-called  civili- 
zation, are  unknown. 

It  is  certainly  a  curious  thing  that  these  simple 
but  intelligent  people  are  able  to  control  their  own 
destinies  with  a  comfortable  degree  of  success,  although 
they  are  without  laws  or  literature  and  without  any 
fixed  custom  to  regulate  the  matrimonial  bond. 

It  would  seem  as  if  there  ought  to  be  a  large  popu- 
lation, for  there  is  an  average  of  about  three  fat,  clever 
children  for  each  family,  the  youngest  as  a  rule  pictur- 
esquely resting  in  a  pocket  on  the  mother's  back.  But 
the  hardships  of  life  in  this  region  are  such  that  acci- 
dents and  deaths  keep  down  the  population. 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         49 

Each  tent  has  a  raised  platform,  upon  which  all 
sleep.  The  edge  of  this  makes  a  seat,  and  on  each 
side  are  placed  stone  lamps  in  which  blubber  is  burned, 
with  moss  as  a  wick.  Over  this  is  a  drying  rack,  also  a 
few  sticks,  but  there  is  no  other  furniture.  Their  dress 
of  furs  gives  the  Eskimos  a  look  of  savage  fierceness 
which  their  kindly  faces  and  easy  temperament  do  not 
warrant. 

On  board  the  yacht  were  busy  days  of  barter.  Furs 
and  ivory  were  gathered  in  heaps  in  exchange  for  guns, 
knives  and  needles.  Every  seaman,  from  cabin  boy  to 
captain,  suddenly  got  rich  in  the  gamble  of  trade  for 
prized  blue-fox  skins  and  narwhal  tusks. 

The  Eskimos  were  equally  elated  with  their  part 
of  the  bargain.  For  a  beautiful  fox  skin,  of  less  use  to 
a  native  than  a  dog  pelt,  he  could  secure  a  pocket  knife 
that  would  serve  him  half  a  lifetime ! 

A  woman  exchanged  her  fur  pants,  worth  a  hun- 
dred dollars,  for  a  red  pocket  handkerchief  with  which 
she  would  decorate  her  head  or  her  igloo  for  years 
to  come. 

Another  gave  her  bearskin  mits  for  a  few  needles, 
and  she  conveyed  the  idea  that  she  had  the  long  end 
of  the  trade!  A  fat  youth  with  a  fatuous  smile  dis- 
played with  glee  two  bright  tin  cups,  one  for  himself 
and  one  for  his  prospective  bride.  He  was  positively 
happy  in  having  obtained  nine  cents'  worth  of  tin  for 
only  an  ivory  tusk  worth  ninety  dollars ! 

With  the  coming  of  the  midnight  tide  we  lifted 
the  schooner  to  an  even  keel  from  the  makeshift  dry- 
dock  on  the  beach.  She  was  then  towed  out  into  the 
bay  by  the  launch  and  two  dories,  and  anchored. 


50  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Our  first  walrus  adventures  began  in  Wolstenholm 
Sound  during  the  beautiful  nightless  days  of  mid- 
August.  The  local  environment  was  fascinating.  The 
schooner  was  anchored  in  North  Star  Bay,  a  lake  of 
glitter  in  which  wild  men  in  skin  canoes  darted  after 
seals  and  eider-ducks.  On  grassy  shores  were  sealskin 
tents,  about  which  fur-clad  women  and  children  vied 
with  wolf-dogs  for  favorite  positions  to  see  the  queer 
doings  of  white  men.  A  remarkable  landmark  made  the 
place  conspicuous.  A  great  table-topped  rock  rose  sud- 
denly out  of  a  low  foreland  to  an  altitude  of  about  six 
hundred  feet.  About  this  giant  cliff,  gulls,  guillemots 
and  ravens  talked  and  winged  uproariously.  The  rock 
bore  the  native  name  of  Oomanaq.  With  the  unique 
Eskimo  manner  of  name-coining,  the  village  was  called 
Oomanooi. 

Wolstenholm  Sound  is  a  large  land-locked  body  of 
water,  with  arms  reaching  to  the  narrow  gorges  of  the 
overland  sea  of  ice,  from  which  icebergs  tumble  ceas- 
lessly.  The  sparkling  water  reflected  the  surroundings 
in  many  shades  of  blue  and  brown,  relieved  by  strong 
contrasts  of  white  and  black.  On  the  western  sky  line 
were  the  chiseled  walls  of  Acponie  and  other  islands, 
and  beyond  a  steel-gray  mist  in  which  was  wrapped  the 
frozen  sea  of  the  Polar  gateway.  Fleets  of  icebergs 
moved  to  and  fro,  dragging  tails  of  drift  be  jeweled 
with  blue  crystal. 

Far  out — ten  miles  from  our  outlook — there  was 
a  meeting  of  the  currents.  Here,  small  pieces  of  sea- 
ice  slowly  circled  in  an  eddy,  and  upon  them  were  herds 
of  walruses.  We  did  not  see  them,  but  their  shrill  voices 
rang  through  the  icy  air  like  a  wireless  message.  This 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         51 

was  a  call  to  action  which  Mr.  Bradley  could  not  resist, 
and  preparations  were  begun  for  the  combat. 

The  motor  boat — the  most  important  factor  in  the 
chase — had  been  especially  built  for  just  such  an  en- 
counter. Covered  with  a  folding  whale-back  top  en- 
tirely painted  white  to  resemble  ice,  we  had  hoped  to 
hunt  walrus  under  suitable  Arctic  cover. 

Taking  a  white  dory  in  tow,  two  Eskimo  harpoon- 
ers  were  invited  to  follow.  The  natives  in  kayaks  soon 
discovered  to  their  surprise  that  their  best  speed  was  not 
equal  to  ours — for  the  first  time  they  were  beaten  in 
their  own  element.  For  ages  the  Eskimos  had  rested 
secure  in  the  belief  that  the  kayak  was  the  fastest  thing 
afloat.  They  had  been  beaten  by  big  ships,  of  course, 
but  these  had  spiritual  wings  and  did  not  count  in  the 
race  of  man's  craft.  This  little  launch,  however,  with 
its  rapid-fire  gas  explosions,  made  their  eyes  bulge  to 
a  wondering,  wide-open,  seal-like  curiosity.  They 
begged  to  be  taken  aboard  to  watch  the  loading  of  the 
engines ;  they  thought  we  fed  it  with  cartridges. 

After  a  delightful  run  of  an  hour,  a  pan  of  ice 
was  sighted  with  black  hummocks  on  it.  "Ahwek! 
Ahwek!"  the  Eskimos  shouted.  A  "similar  sound  floated 
over  the  oily  waters  from  many  walrus  throats.  The 
walruses  were  about  three  miles  to  the  southwest.  At  a 
slower  speed  we  advanced  two  miles  more.  In  the 
meantime  Mr.  Bradley  cleared  the  deck  for  action.  The 
direction  of  the  hunting  tactics  was  now  turned  over 
to  My-ah.  The  mate  was  at  the  wheel.  I  pushed  the 
levers  of  the  gasoline  kicker.  Our  line  of  attack  was 
ordered  at  right  angles  to  the  wind.  As  we  neared  the 
game,  the  engines  were  stopped. 


52  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Looking  through  glasses,  the  sight  of  the  gregari- 
ous herd  made  our  hearts  quicken.  They  were  all 
males  of  tremendous  size,  with  glistening  tusks  with 
which  they  horned  one  another  in  efforts  for  favorable 
positions.  Some  were  asleep,  others  basked  in  the  sun 
with  heads  turning  lazily  from  side  to  side.  Now  and 
then,  they  uttered  sleepy,  low  grunts.  They  were 
quivering  in  a  gluttonous  slumber,  while  the  organs  piled 
up  their  bank  account  of  fat  to  pay  the  costs  of  the 
gamble  of  the  coming  winter  night. 

With  muffled  paddles  the  launch  was  now  silently 
propelled  forward,  while  the  kayaks  stealthily  ad- 
vanced to  deliver  the  harpoons.  The  Eskimo  reason 
for  this  mode  of  procedure  is  based  on  a  careful  study 
of  the  walrus'  habits.  Its  nose  in  sleep  is  always 
pointed  windwards.  Its  ears  are  at  all  times  sensitive 
to  noises  from  every  direction,  while  the  eyes  during 
wakeful  moments  sweep  the  horizon.  But  its  horizon 
is  very  narrow.  Only  the  nose  and  the  ear  sense  the 
distant  alarm.  We  advanced  very  slowly  and  cautiously, 
and  that  only  when  all  heads  were  down.  Our  boat 
slowly  got  within  three  hundred  yards  of  the  herd.  Pre- 
paring their  implements  to  strike,  the  Eskimos  had  ad- 
vanced to  within  fifty  feet.  The  moment  was  tense. 
Of  a  sudden,  a  tumultuous  floundering  sound  smote  the 
air.  The  sleeping  creatures  awoke,  and  with  a  start 
leaped  into  the  sea.  Turning  their  kayaks,  the  Eskimos 
paddled  a  wild  retreat  and  sought  the  security  of  the 
launch.  The  sport  of  that  herd  was  lost  to  us.  Al- 
though they  darted  about  under  water  in  a  threatening 
manner,  they  only  rose  to  the  surface  at  a  safe  distance. 

Scanning  the  surroundings  with  our  glasses,  about 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         53 

two  miles  to  the  south  another  group  was  sighted. 
This  time  Bradley,  as  the  chief  nimrod,  assumed  direc- 
tion. The  kayaks  and  the  Eskimos  were  placed  in  the 
dory.  Tactics  were  reversed.  Instead  of  creeping  up 
slowly,  a  sudden  rush  was  planned.  No  heed  was  taken 
of  noise  or  wind.  The  carburetor  was  opened,  the  spark 
lever  of  the  magneto  was  advanced  to  its  limit,  and  we 
shot  through  the  waters  like  a  torpedo  boat.  As  we 
neared  the  herd,  the  dory,  with  its  Eskimos,  was  freed 
from  the  launch.  The  Eskimos  were  given  no  instruc- 
tions, and  they  wisely  chose  to  keep  out  of  the  battle. 

As  we  got  to  within  two  hundred  yards,  the  canvas 
top  of  the  launch  fell  and  a  heavy  gun  bombardment 
began.  The  walruses  had  not  had  time  to  wake ;  the  sud- 
denness of  the  onslaught  completely  dazed  them.  One 
after  another  dropped  his  ponderous  head  with  a 
sudden  jerk  as  a  prize  to  the  marksmen,  while  the 
launch,  at  reduced  speed,  encircled  the  walrus-encum- 
bered pan.  Few  escaped.  There  were  heads  and  meat 
and  skins  enough  to  satisfy  all  wants  for  a  long  time 
to  follow.  But  the  game  was  too  easy — the  advantage 
of  an  up-to-date  sportsman  had  been  carried  to  its 
highest  degree  of  perfection.  It  was  otherwise,  how- 
ever, in  the  walrus  battles  that  followed  later — battles 
on  the  success  of  which  depended  the  possibility  of  my 
being  able  to  assail  the  northern  ice  desert,  in  an  effort 
to  reach  the  Polar  goal. 

Oomanooi  was  but  one  of  six  villages  among  which 
the  tribe  had  divided  its  two  hundred  and  fifty  people 
for  the  current  season.  To  study  these  interesting  folk, 
to  continue  the  traffic  and  barter,  and  to  enjoy  for  a 
short  time  the  rare  sport  of  sailing  and  hunting  in  this 


54  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

wild  region,  we  decided  to  visit  as  many  of  the  villages 
as  possible. 

In  the  morning  the  anchor  was  raised  and  we  set 
sail  in  a  light  wind  headed  for  more  northern  villages. 
It  was  a  gray  day,  with  a  quiet  sea.  The  speed  of  the 
yacht  was  not  fast  enough  to  be  exciting,  so  Mr. 
Bradley  suggested  lowering  the  launch  for  a  crack  at 
ducks,  or  a  chase  at  walrus  or  a  drive  at  anything  that 
happened  to  cut  the  waters.  His  harpoon  gun  was 
taken,  as  it  was  hoped  that  a  whale  might  come  our 
way,  but  the  gun  proved  unsatisfactory  and  did  not 
contribute  much  to  our  sport.  In  the  fleet  launch  we 
were  able  to  run  all  around  the  schooner  as  she  slowly 
sailed  over  Wolstenholm  Sound. 

Ducks  were  secured  in  abundance.  Seals  were 
given  chase,  but  they  were  able  to  escape  us.  Nearing 
Saunders  Island,  a  herd  of  walruses  was  seen  on  a  pan  of 
drift  ice  far  ahead.  The  magneto  was  pushed,  the 
carburetor  opened,  and  out  we  rushed  after  the  shout- 
ing beasts.  Two,  with  splendid  tusks,  were  obtained, 
and  two  tons  of  meat  and  blubber  were  turned  over  to 
our  Eskimo  allies. 

The  days  of  hunting  proved  quite  strenuous,  and  in 
the  evening  we  were  glad  to  seek  the  comfort  of  our 
cosy  cabin,  after  dining  on  eider-ducks  and  other  game 
delicacies. 

A  few  Eskimos  had  asked  permission  to  accom- 
pany us  to  a  point  farther  north.  Among  them  was  a 
widow,  to  whom,  for  herself  and  her  children,  we  had 
offered  a  large  bed,  with  straw  in  it,  between  decks,  but 
which,  savage  as  she  was,  she  had  refused,  saying  she 
preferred  the  open  air  on  deck.  There  she  arranged  a 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         55 

den  among  the  anchor  chains,  under  a  shelter  of  seal 
skins. 

In  tears,  she  told  us  the  story  of  her  life,  a  story 
which  offered  a  peep  into  the  tragedy  and  at  the  same 
time  the  essential  comedy  of  Eskimo  existence.  It 
came  in  response  to  a  question  from  me  as  to  how  the 
world  had  used  her,  for  I  had  known  her  years  before. 
At  my  simple  question,  she  buried  her  face  in  her  hands 
and  for  a  time  could  only  mutter  rapidly  and  unin- 
telligibly to  her  two  little  boys.  Then,  between  sobs, 
she  told  me  her  story. 

Ma-nee — such  was  her  name — was  a  descendant  of 
the  Eskimos  of  the  American  side.  A  foreign  belle, 
and,  although  thin,  fair  to  look  upon,  as  Eskimo  beauty 
goes,  her  hand  was  sought  early  by  the  ardent  youths 
of  the  tribe,  who,  truth  to  tell,  look  upon  utility  as  more 
desirable  than  beauty  in  a  wife.  The  heart  of  Ma-nee 
throbbed  to  the  pleadings  of  one  Ik-wa,  a  youth  lithe 
and  brave,  with  brawn  and  sinews  as  resilient  as  rubber 
and  strong  as  steel,  handsome,  dark,  with  flashing  eyes, 
yet  with  a  heart  as  cruel  as  the  relentless  wind  and  cold 
sea  of  the  North.  Ma-nee  married  Ik-wa  and  bore  to 
him  several  children.  These,  which  meant  wealth  of  the 
most  valuable  kind  (children  even  exceeding  in  value 
dogs,  tusks  and  skins) ,  meant  the  attainment  of  Ik-wa's 
selfish  purpose.  Ma-nee  was  fair,  but  her  hands  were 
not  adroit  with  the  needle,  nor  was  she  fair  in  the 
plump  fashion  desirable  in  wives. 

Ik-wa  met  Ah-tah,  a  good  seamstress,  capable  of 
much  toil,  not  beautiful,  but  round  and  plump.  Where- 
upon, Ik-wa  took  Ah-tah  to  wife,  and  leading  Ma-nee  to 
the  door  of  their  igloo,  ordered  her  to  leave.  Cruel  as 


56  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

can  be  these  natives,  they  also  possess  a  persistence  and 
a  tenderness  that  manifest  themselves  in  strange, 
dramatic  ways.  Ma-nee,  disconsolate  but  brave,  de- 
parted. There  being  at  the  time  a  scarcity  of  marriage- 
able women  in  the  village,  Ma-nee  was  soon  wooed  by 
another,  an  aged  Eskimo,  whose  muscles  had  begun  to 
wither,  whose  eyes  no  longer  flashed  as  did  Ik-wa's, 
but  whose  heart  was  kind.  To  him  Ma-nee  bore  two 
children,  those  which  she  had  with  her  on  deck.  To 
them,  unfortunately,  descended  the  heritage  of  their 
father's  frailities;  one — now  eight — being  the  only  deaf 
and  dumb  Eskimo  in  all  the  land;  the  other,  the 
younger,  aged  three,  a  weakling  with  a  pinched  and 
pallid  face  and  thin,  gaunt  arms.  Ma-nee's  husband 
was  not  a  good  hunter,  for  age  and  cold  had  sapped  his 
vigor.  Their  home  was  peaceful  if  not  prosperous ;  the 
two  loved  one  another,  and,  because  of  their  defects, 
Ma-nee  grew  to  love  her  little  ones  unwontedly. 

Just  before  the  beginning  of  the  long  winter  night, 
the  old  father,  anxious  to  provide  food  and  deer  skins 
for  the  coming  months  of  continuous  darkness,  ven- 
tured alone  in  search  of  game  among  the  mountains 
of  the  interior.  Day  after  day,  while  the  gloom  de- 
scended, Ma-nee,  dry  eyed  waited.  The  aged  father 
never  came  back.  Returning  hunters  finally  brought 
news  that  he  had  perished  alone,  from  a  gun  accident,  in 
the  icy  wilderness,  and  they  had  found  him,  his  frozen, 
mummied  face  peeping  anxiously  from  the  mantle  of 
snow.  Ma-nee  wept  broken-heartedly. 

Ma-nee  gazed  into  the  faces  of  the  two  children 
with  a  wild,  tragic  wistfulness.  By  the  stern  and  in- 
violable law  of  the  Eskimos,  Ma-nee  knew  her  two  be- 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         57 

loved  ones  were  condemned  to  die.  In  this  land,  where 
food  is  at  a  premium,  and  where  every  helpless  and  de- 
pendent life  means  a  sensible  drain  upon  the  tribe's 
resources,  they  have  evolved  that  Spartan  law  which 
results  in  the  survival  of  only  the  fittest.  The  one  child, 
because  of  its  insufficient  senses,  the  other  because  it 
was  still  on  its  mother's  back  and  under  three  at  the 
time  its  father  died,  and  with  no  father  to  support 
them,  were  doomed.  Kind-hearted  as  the  Eskimos 
naturally  are,  they  can  at  times,  in  the  working  out  of 
that  code  which  means  continued  existence,  be  terribly 
brutal.  Their  fierce  struggle  with  the  elements  for 
very  existence  has  developed  in  them  an  elemental 
fierceness.  From  probable  experience  in  long-past 
losses  of  life  from  contagion,  they  instinctively  destroy 
every  igloo  in  which  a  native  dies,  or,  at  times,  to  save 
the  igloo,  they  heartlessly  seize  the  dying,  and  dragging 
him  through  the  low  door,  cast  him,  ere  breath  has 
ceased,  into  the  life-stilling  outer  world. 

This  inviolable  custom  of  ages  Ma-nee,  with  a 
Spartan  courage,  determined  to  break.  During  the 
long  night  which  had  just  passed,  friends  had  been  kind 
to  Ma-nee,  but  now  that  she  was  defying  Eskimo 
usage,  she  could  expect  no  assistance.  Brutal  as  he 
had  been  to  her,  hopeless  as  seemed  such  prospects, 
Ma-nee  thought  of  the  cruel  Ik-wa  and  determined  to 
go  to  him,  with  the  two  defective  children  of  her  second 
husband,  beg  him  to  accept  them  as  his  own  and  to  take 
her,  as  a  secondary  wife,  a  servant — a  position  of 
humiliation  and  hard  labor.  In  this  determination, 
which  can  be  appreciated  only  by  those  who  know  how 
implacable  and  heartless  the  natives  can  be,  Ma-nee  was 


58  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

showing  one  of  their  marvellous  traits,  that  indomitable 
courage,  persistence  and  dogged  hopefulness  which,  in 
my  two  later  companions,  E-tuk-i-shook  and  Ah-we-lah, 
enabled  them,  with  me,  to  reach  the  Pole. 

I  admired  the  spirit  of  Ma-nee,  and  promised  to 
help  her,  although  the  mission  of  reuniting  the  two 
.seemed  dubious. 

Ma-nee  was  not  going  to  Ik-wa  entirely  empty- 
handed,  however,  for  she  possessed  some  positive  wealth 
in  the  shape  of  several  dogs,  and  three  bundles  of  skins 
and  sticks  which  comprised  her  household  furniture. 

We  soon  reached  the  village  where  Ma-nee  was  to 
be  put  ashore.  Very  humbly,  the  heroic  mother  and 
her  two  frail  children  went  to  Ik-wa's  tent.  Ik-wa 
was  absent  hunting,  and  his  wife,  who  had  supplanted 
Ma-nee,  a  fat,  unsociable  creature,  appeared.  Weep- 
ing, Ma-nee  told  of  her  plight  and  begged  for  shelter. 
The  woman  stolidly  listened;  then,  without  a  word, 
turned  her  back  on  the  forlorn  mother  and  entered  her 
tent.  For  the  unintentional  part  we  had  played  she 
.gave  us  exceedingly  cold,  frowning  looks  which  were 
quite  expressive. 

Ma-nee  now  went  to  the  other  villagers.  They  lis- 
tened to  her  plans,  and  their  primitive  faces  lighted 
with  sympathy.  I  soon  saw  them  serving  a  pot  of  steam- 
ing oil  meat  in  her  honor — a  feast  in  which  we  were 
urgently  invited  to  partake,  but  which  we,  fortunately, 
found  some  good  excuse  for  avoiding.  Although  she  had 
violated  a  custom  of  the  tribe,  these  people,  both  stern- 
hearted  and  tender,  recognized  the  greatness  of  a 
mother-love  which  had  braved  an  unwritten  law  of  ages, 
and  they  took  her  in.  Several  months  later,  on  a  return 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         59 

to  the  village,  I  saw  Ik-wa  himself.  Although  he  did  not 
thank  me  for  the  unwitting  part  I  had  played  in  their 
reunion,  he  had  taken  Ma-nee  back,  and  near  his  own 
house  was  a  new  igloo  in  which  the  mother  lived  with  her 
children. 

Resuming  our  journey,  a  snow  squall  soon  frosted 
the  deck  of  the  yacht,  and  to  escape  the  icy  air  we  retired 
early  to  our  berths.  During  the  night  the  speed  of  the 
yacht  increased,  and  when  we  appeared  on  deck  again, 
at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning,-  the  rays  of  the  August 
sun  seemed  actually  warm. 

We  passed  the  ice-battered  and  storm-swept  cliffs 
of  Cape  Parry  and  entered  Whale  Sound.  On  a  sea  of 
gold,  strewn  with  ice  islands  of  ultramarine  and  alabas- 
ter, whales  spouted  and  walrus  shouted.  Large  flocks 
of  little  auks  rushed  rapidly  by. 

The  wind  was  light,  but  the  engine  took  us  along  at 
a  pace  just  fast  enough  to  allow  us  to  enjoy  the  superb 
surroundings.  In  the  afternoon  we  were  well  into 
Inglefield  Gulf,  and  near  Itiblu.  There  was  a  strong 
head  wind,  and  enough  ice  about  to  make  us  cautious  in 
our  prospect. 

We  aimed  here  to  secure  Eskimo  guides  and  with 
them  seek  caribou  in  Olrik's  Bay.  While  the  schooner 
was  tacking  for  a  favorable  berth  in  the  drift  off  Kanga, 
the  launch  was  lowered,  and  we  sought  to  interview  the 
Eskimos  of  Itiblu.  The  ride  was  a  wet  one,  for  a  shori, 
choppy  sea  poured  icy  spray  over  us  and  tumbled  us 
about. 

There  were  only  one  woman,  a  few  children,  and 
about  a  score  of  dogs  at  the  place.  The  woman  was  a 
remarkably  fast  talker,  long  out  of  practice.  She  told 


GO  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

us  that  her  husband  and  the  other  men  were  absent  on  a 
caribou  hunt,  and  then,  with  a  remarkably  rapid  articu- 
lation and  without  a  single  question  from  us,  plunged 
incessantly  on  through  all  the  news  of  the  tribe  for  a 
year.  After  gasping  for  breath  like  a  smothered  seal, 
she  then  began  with  news  of  previous  years  and  a  his- 
tory of  forgotten  ages.  We  started  back  for  the  launch, 
and  she  invited  herself  to  the  pleasure  of  our  company 
to  the  beach. 

We  had  gone  only  a  few  steps  before  it  occurred  to 
her  that  she  was  in  need  of  something.  Would  we  not 
get  her  a  few  boxes  of  matches  in  exchange  for  a  narwhal 
tusk  ?  We  should  be  delighted,  and  a  handful  of  sweets 
went  with  the  bargain.  Her  boy  brought  down  two 
ivory  tusks,  each  eight  feet  in  length,  the  two  being 
worth  one  hundred  and  fifty  dollars.  Had  we  a  knife 
to  spare?  Yes;  and  a  tin  spoon  was  also  given,  just  to 
show  that  we  were  liberal. 

The  yacht  was  headed  northward,  across  Inglefield 
Gulf.  With  a  fair  wind,  we  cut  tumbling  seas  of  ebony 
with  a  racing  dash.  Though  the  wind  was  strong,  the 
air  was  remarkably  clear. 

The  great  chiselled  cliffs  of  Cape  Auckland  rose  in 
terraced  grandeur  under  the  midnight  sun.  The  dis- 
tance was  twelve  miles,  and  it  was  twelve  miles  of  sub- 
merged rocks  and  shallow  water. 

It  was  necessary  to  give  Karnah  a  wide  berth. 
There  were  bergs  enough  about  to  hold  the  water  down, 
though  an  occasional  sea  rose  with  a  sickening  thump. 
At  Karnah  we  went  ashore.  There  was  not  a  man  in 
town,  all  being  absent  on  a  distant  hunting  campaign. 
But,  though  there  were  no  men,  the  place  was  far  from 


DRIVING  SPUR  OF  THE  POLAR  QUEST         61 

being  deserted,  for  five  women,  fifteen  children  and 
forty-five  dogs  came  out  to  meet  us. 

Here  we  saw  five  sealskin  tents  pitched  among  the 
bowlders  of  a  glacial  stream.  An  immense  quantity  of 
narwhal  meat  was  lying  on  the  rocks  and  stones  to  dry. 
Skins  were  stretched  on  the  grass,  and  a  general  air  of 
thrift  was  evidenced  about  the  place.  Bundles  of  seal- 
skins, packages  of  pelts  and  much  ivory  were  brought 
out  to  trade  and  establish  friendly  intercourse.  We 
gave  the  natives  sugar,  tobacco  and  ammunition  in 
quantities  to  suit  their  own  estimate  of  value. 

Would  we  not  place  ourselves  at  ease  and  stay  for 
a  day  or  two,  as  their  husbands  would  soon  return?  We 
were  forced  to  decline  their  hospitality,  for  without  the 
harbor  there  was  too  much  wind  to  keep  the  schooner 
waiting.  Eskimos  have  no  salutation  except  a  greeting 
smile  or  a  parting  look  of  regret.  We  got  both  at  the 
same  time  as  we  stepped  into  the  launch  and  shouted 
good-bye. 

The  captain  was  told  to  proceed  to  Cape  Robert- 
son. The  wind  eased,  and  a  descending  fog  soon  blotted 
out  part  of  the  landscape,  horizon  and  sky.  It  hung 
like  a  gray  pall  a  thousand  feet  above  us,  leaving  the  air 
below  this  bright  and  startlingly  clear. 


TO  THE  LIMITS  OF  NAVIGATION 

EXCITING    HUNTS    FOR    GAME    WITH    THE    ESKIMOS AR- 
RIVAL  AT   ETAH SBEEDY   TRIP   TO   ANNOATOK,   THE 

WINDY     PLACE,     WHERE    SUPPLIES    ARE    FOUND     IN 

ABUNDANCE EVERYTHING  AUSPICIOUS  FOR  DASH  TO 

THE  POLE DETERMINATION  TO  ESSAY  THE  EFFORT- 
BRADLEY   INFORMED DEBARK   FOR   THE   POLE THE 

YACHT  RETURNS 


IV 


ALONE  WITH  OUR  DESTINY,  SEVEN  HUNDRED  MILES 
FROM  THE  POLE 

We  awoke  off  Cape  Robertson  early  on  August  13, 
and  went  ashore  before  breakfast.  The  picturesque 
coast  here  rises  suddenly  to  an  altitude  of  about  two 
thousand  feet,  and  is  crowned  with  a  gleaming,  silver 
ice  cap.  Large  bays,  blue  glacial  walls  and  prominent 
headlands  give  a  pleasing  variety.  It  is  much  like  the 
coast  of  all  Greenland.  On  its  southern  exposure  the 
eroded  Huronian  rocks  provide  shelter  for  millions  of 
little  auks.  They  dart  incessantly  from  cliff  to  sea  in  a 
chattering  cloud  of  wings.  Rather  rich  and  grassy  ver- 
dure offers  an  oasis  for  the  Arctic  hare,  while  the  blue 
fox  finds  life  easy  here,  for  he  can  fill  his  winter  den 
with  the  fat  feathered  creatures  which  teem  by  millions. 


TO  THE  LIMITS  OF  NAVIGATION  63 

The  Eskimos  profit  by  the  combination,  and  pitch 
their  camp  at  the  foot  of  the  cliffs,  for  the  chase  on  sea 
is  nearly  as  good  here  as  in  other  places,  while  land 
creatures  literally  tumble  into  the  larder. 

As  we  approached  the  shore,  ten  men,  nine  women, 
thirty-one  children  and  one  hundred  and  six  dogs  came 
out  to  meet  us.  I  count  the  children  and  dogs  for  they 
are  equally  important  in  Eskimo  economy.  The  latter 
are  by  far  the  most  important  to  the  average  Caucasian 
in  the  Arctic. 

Only  small  game  had  fallen  to  the  Eskimos'  lot, 
and  they  were  eager  to  venture  out  with  us  after  big 
game.  Mr.  Bradley  gathered  a  suitable  retinue  of 
native  guides,  and  we  weiie  not  long  in  arranging  a 
compact. 

Free  passage,  the  good  graces  of  the  cook,  and  a 
knife  each  were  to  be  their  pay.  A  caribou  hunt  was 
not  sufficiently  novel  to  merit  a  return  to  Olrik's  Bay, 
where  intelligent  hunting  is  always  rewarded,  but  it 
was  hoped  we  might  get  a  hunt  at  Kookaan,  near  the 
head  of  Robertson  Bay.* 

Although  hunting  in  the  bay  was  not  successful 
from  a  practical  standpoint,  it  afforded  exciting  pleas- 


*The  Death  of  John  M.  Verhoeff.— As  we  passed  Robertson  Bay, 
there  came  up  memories  of  the  tragedy  of  Verhoeff.  This  young 
man  was  a  member  of  Peary's  first  expedition,  in  1891.  He  had  paid  $3,000 
toward  the  fund  of  the  expedition.  Verhoeff  was  young  and  enthusiastic. 
He  gave  his  time,  his  money,  and  he  risked  his  life  for  Peary.  He  was 
treated  with  about  the  same  consideration  as  that  accorded  the  Eskimo 
dogs.  When  I  last  saw  him  in  camp,  he  was  in  tears,  telling  of  Peary's 
injustice.  Mrs.  Peary — I  advert  to  this  with  all  possible  reluctance — had 
done  much  to  make  his  life  bitter,  and  over  this  he  talked  for  days. 
Finally  he  said:  "I  will  never  go  home  in  the  same  ship  with  that  man 
and  that  woman."  It  was  the  last  sentence  he  uttered  in  my  hearing. 
He  did  not  go  home  in  that  ship.  Instead,  he  wandered  off  over  the 
glacier,  where  he  left  his  body  in  the  blue  depths  of  a  crevasse. 


64  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

ure  in  perilous  waters.  Even  during  these  hours  of 
sport,  my  mind  was  busy  with  tentative  plans  for  a 
Polar  journey.  Whenever  I  aimed  my  gun  at  a  snort- 
ing walrus,  or  at  some  white- winged  Arctic  bird,  I  felt  a 
thrill  in  the  thought  that  upon  the  skill  of  my  arms,  of 
my  aim,  and  upon  that  of  the  natives  we  were  later  to 
join,  would  depend  the  getting  of  food  sufficient  to  en- 
able me  to  embark  upon  my  dr^am.  Everything  I  did 
now  began  to  have  some  bearing  upon  this  glorious,  in- 
toxicating prospect ;  it  colored  my  life,  day  and  night.  I 
realized  how  easily  I  might  fail  even  should  conditions 
be  favorable  enough  to  warrant  the  journey;  for  this 
reason,  because  of  the  unwelcome  doubt  which  at  times 
chilled  my  enthusiasm,  I  did  not  yet  confide  to  Bradley 
my  growing  ambition. 

Returning  to  the  settlement,  we  paid  our  hunting 
guides,  made  presents  to  the  women  and  children,  and 
set  sail  for  Etah.  An  offshore  breeze  filled  the  big  wings 
of  the  canvas.  As  borne  on  the  back  of  some  great 
white  bird,  we  soared  northward  into  a  limpid  molten 
sea.  From  below  came  the  music  of  our  phonograph, 
curiously  shouting  its  tunes,  classic  and  popular,  in  that 
grim,  golden  region  of  glory  and  death. 

It  is  curious  how  ambition  sets  the  brain  on  fire, 
and  quickens  the  heart  throbs.  As  we  sped  over  the 
magical  waters,  the  wild  golden  air  electric  about  me, 
I  believe  I  felt  an  ecstasy  of  desire  such  as  mystics 
achieved  from  fasting  and  prayer.  It  was  the  surge  of 
an  ambition  which  began  to  grow  mightily  within  mer 
which  I  felt  no  obstacle  could  withstand,  and  which, 
later,  I  believe  carried  me  forward  with  its  wings  of 
faith  when  my  body  well  nigh  refused  to  move.  We 


TO  THE  LIMITS  OF  NAVIGATION  65 

passed  Cape  Alexander  and  entered  Smith  Sound.  We 
sped  by  storm-chiselled  cliffs,  whereupon  the  hand  of 
nature  had  written  a  history,  unintelligible  to  humans, 
as  with  a  pen  of  iron.  The  sun  was  low.  Great  bergs 
loomed  up  in  the  radiant  distance,  and  reflecting  silver- 
shimmering  halos,  seemed  to  me  as  the  silver-winged 
ghosts  of  those  who  died  in  this  region  and  who  were 
borne  alone  on  the  wind  and  air. 

Nature  seemed  to  sing  with  exultation.  Approach- 
ing a  highland  of  emerald  green  and  seal  brown,  I  heard 
the  wild  shouting  of  hawks  from  the  summit,  and  from 
below  the  shrill  chattering  of  millions  of  auks  with  baby 
families.  And  nearer,  from  the  life  enraptured  waters, 
the  minor  note  of  softly  cooing  ducks  and  mating  guil- 
lemots. From  the  interior  land  of  ice,  rising  above  the 
low  booming  of  a  sapphire  glacier  moving  majestically 
to  the  sea,  rang  the  bark  of  foxes,  the  shrill  notes  of  the 
ptarmigan,  and  from  an  invisible  farther  distance  the 
raucous  wolf  howl  of  Eskimo  dogs. 

Before  us,  at  times,  would  come  a  burst  of  spouting 
spray,  and  a  whale  would  rise  to  the  surface  of  the  sea. 
Nearby,  on  a  floating  island  of  ice,  mother  walrus  would 
soothingly  murmur  to  her  babies.  From  invisible 
places  came  the  paternal  voices  of  the  oogzook,  and  as 
we  went  forward,  seals,  white  whales  and  unicorns  ap- 
peared, speaking  perhaps  the  sign  language  of  the 
animal  deaf  and  dumb  in  the  blue  submarine. 

Occasionally,  there  was  an  explosion,  when 
thunder  as  from  a  hundred  cannons  echoed  from  cliff  to 
cliff.  A  berg  was  shattered  to  ruins.  Following  this 
would  rise  the  frightened  voices  of  every  animal  above 
water.  Now  and  then,  from  ultramarine  grottoes  issued 


66  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

weird,  echoing  sounds,  and  almost  continually  rising  to 
ringing  peals  and  shuddering  into  silence,  reiterant,  in- 
cessant, came  nature's  bugle-calls — calls  of  the  wind, 
of  sundering  glaciers,  of  sudden  rushes  of  ice  rivers,  of 
exploding  gases  and  of  disintegrating  bergs.  With 
those  sounds  pealing  in  our  ears  clarion-like,  we  entered 
the  "Gates  of  Hades,"  the  Polar  gateway,  bound  for 
the  harbor  where  the  last  fringe  of  the  world's  humanity 
straggles  finally  up  on  the  globe. 

As  we  entered  Foulke  Fiord,  half  a  gale  came 
from  the  sea.  We  steered  for  the  settlement  of 
Etah.  A  tiny  settlement  it  was,  for  it  was  com- 
posed of  precisely  four  tents,  which  for  this  sea- 
son, had  been  pitched  beside  a  small  stream,  just 
inside  of  the  first  projecting  point  on  the  north  shore. 
Inside  this  point  there  was  sheltered  water  for  the 
Eskimo's  kayaks,  and  it  also  made  a  good  harbor  for  the 
schooner.  It  is  possible  in  favorable  seasons  to  push 
through  Smith  Sound,  over  Kane  Basin,  into  Kennedy 
Channel,  but  the  experiment  is  always  at  the  risk  of  the 
vessel. 

So,  as  there  was  no  special  reasons  for  us  to  hazard 
life  in  making  this  attempt,  we  decided  to  prepare  the 
schooner  here  for  the  return  voyage. 

These  preparations  would  occupy  several  days. 
We  determined  to  spend  as  much  of  this  time  as  pos- 
sible in  sport,  since  much  game  abounded  in  this  region. 
Before  we  landed  we  watched  the  Eskimos  harpoon  a 
white  whale.  There  were  no  unexplored  spots  in  this 
immediate  vicinity,  as  both  Doctor  Kane  and  Doctor 
Hayes,  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  had  been 
thoroughly  over  the  ground.  The  little  auks  kept  us 


TO  THE  LIMITS  OF  NAVIGATION  67 

busy  for  a  day  after  our  arrival,  while  hares,  tumbling 
like  snowballs  over  wind-polished,  Archaean  rocks,  gave 
another  day  of  gun  recreation.  Far  beyond,  along  the 
inland  ice,  were  caribou,  but  we  preferred  to  confine  our 
hunting  to  the  seashore.  The  bay  waters  were  alive 
with  eider-ducks  arid  guillemots,  while,  just  outside, 
walruses  dared  us  to  venture  in  open  contest  on  the 
wind-swept  water. 

After  satisfying  our  desire  for  the  hunt,  we  pre- 
pared to  start  for  Annoatok,  twenty-five  miles  to  the 
northward.  This  is  the  northernmost  settlement  of  the 
globe,  a  place  beyond  which  even  the  hardy  Eskimos 
attempt  nothing  but  brief  hunting  excursions,  and 
where,  curiously,  money  is  useless  because  it  has  no 
value. 

We  decided  to  go  in  the  motor  boat,  so  the  tanks 
were  filled  with  gasoline  and  suitable  food  and  camp 
equipment  were  loaded.  On  the  morning  of  August  24, 
we  started  for  Annoatok. 

It  was  a  beautiful  day.  The  sun  glowed  in  a  sky 
<of  Italian  blue.  A  light  air  crossed  the  sea,  which 
glowed  dully,  like  ground  glass.  Passing  inside  of 
Littleton  Island,  we  searched  for  relics  along  Life- 
boat Cove.  There  the  Polaris  was  stranded  in  a  sinking 
condition  in  1872,  with  fourteen  men  on  board.  The 
desolate  cliffs  of  Cape  Hatherton  were  a  midsummer 
blaze  of  color  and  light  that  contrasted  strongly  with 
the  cold  blue  of  the  many  towering  bergs. 

As  we  went  swiftly  past  the  series  of  wind-swept 
headlands,  the  sea  and  air  became  alive  with  seals,  wal- 
ruses and  birds.  We  did  little  shooting  as  we  were 
eagerly  bent  on  reaching  Annoatok. 


68  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

As  we  passed  the  sharp  rocks  of  Cairn  Point,  we 
saw  a  cluster  of  nine  tents  on  a  small  bay  under  Cape 
Inglefield. 

"Look,  look!  There  is  Annoatok!"  cried  Tung-we, 
our  native  guide.  Looking  farther,  we  saw  that  the 
entire  channel  beyond  was  blocked  with  a  jam  of  ice. 
Fortunately  we  were  able  to  take  our  boat  as  far  as 
we  desired.  A  perpendicular  cliff  served  as  a  pier  to 
which  to  fasten  it.  Here  it  could  rise  and  fall  with  the 
tide,  and  in  little  danger  from  drifting  ice. 

Ordinarily,  Annoatok  is  a  town  of  only  a  single 
family  or  perhaps  two,  but  we  found  it  unusually  large 
and  populous,  for  the  best  hunters  had  gathered  here 
for  the  winter  bear  hunt.  Their  summer  game  catch 
had  been  very  lucky.  Immense  quantities  of  meat  were 
strewn  along  the  shore,  under  mounds  of  stone.  More 
than  a  hundred  dogs,  the  standard  by  which  Eskimo 
prosperity  is  measured,  yelped  a  greeting,  and  twelve 
long-haired,  wild  men  came  out  to  meet  us  as  friends. 

It  came  strongly  to  me  that  this  was  the  spot  to 
make  the  base  for  a  Polar  dash.  Here  were  Eskimo 
helpers,  strong,  hefty  natives  from  whom  I  could  select 
the  best  to  accompany  me;  here,  by  a  fortunate  chance, 
were  the  best  dog  teams;  here  were  plenty  of  furs  for 
clothing;  and  here  was  unlimited  food.  These  supplies, 
combined  with  supplies  on  the  schooner,  would  give  all 
that  was  needed  for  the  campaign.  Nothing  could  have 
been  more  ideal. 

For  the  past  several  days,  having  realized  the 
abundance  of  game  and  the  auspicious  weather,  I  had 
thought  more  definitely  of  making  a  dash  for  the  Pole. 
With  all  conditions  in  my  favor,  might  I  not,  by  one 


TO  THE  LIMITS  OF  NAVIGATION  69 

powerful  effort,  achieve  the  thing  that  had  haunted  me 
for  years?  My  former  failures  dogged  me.  If  I  did 
not  try  now,  it  was  a  question  if  an  opportunity  should 
ever  again  come  to  me. 

Now  every  condition  was  auspicious  for  the  effort. 
I  confess  the  task  seemed  audacious  almost  to  the  verge 
of  impossibility.  But,  with  all  these  advantages  so 
fortunately  placed  in  my  hands,  it  took  on  a  new  and 
almost  weird  fascination.  My  many  years  of  school- 
ing in  both  Polar  zones  and  in  mountaineering  would 
now  be  put  to  their  highest  test. 

Yes,  I  would  try,  I  told  myself;  I  believed  I  should 
succeed.  I  informed  Mr.  Bradley  of  my  determination. 
He  was  not  over-optimistic  about  success,  but  he  shook 
my  hand  and  wished  me  luck.  From  his  yacht  he 
volunteered  food,  fuel,  and  other  supplies,  for  local 
camp  use  and  trading,  for  which  I  have  been  thankful. 

"Annoatok"  means  "a  windy  place."  There  is  really 
notking  there  to  be  called  a  harbor;  but  we  now  planned 
to  bring  the  schooner  to  this  point  and  unload  her 
on  the  rocky  shore,  a  task  not  unattended  with  danger. 
However,  the  base  had  to  be  made  somewhere  here- 
about, as  Etah  itself  is  still  more  windy  than  Annoatok. 
Moreover,  at  Etah  the  landing  is  more  difficult,  and  it 
was  not  nearly  so  convenient  for  my  purpose  as  a  base. 

Besides,  there  were  gathered  at  Annoatok,  as  I 
have  described,  with  needed  food  and  furs  in  abundance, 
the  best  Eskimos*  in  all  Greenland,  from  whom,  by 


*Before  he  sailed  on  his  last  Northern  expedition  Mr.  Peary,  learning 
that  I  had  preceded  him,  took  the  initial  step  in  his  campaign  to  discredit 
me  by  issuing  a  statement  to  the  effect  that  I  was  bent  upon  the  unfair 
and  dishonest  purpose  of  enlisting  in  my  aid  Eskimos  which  he  had  the 
exclusive  right  to  command.  Mr.  Peary's  attitude  that  the  Eskimos, 


70  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

reason  of  the  rewards  from  civilization  which  I  could 
give  them,  such  as  knives,  guns,  ammunition,  old  iron, 
needles  and  matches,  I  could  select  a  party  more  effi- 
cient, because  of  their  persistence,  tough  fibre,  courage 
and  familiarity  with  Arctic  traveling,  than  any  party 
of  white  men  could  be. 

The  possible  combination  of  liberal  supplies  and 
valiant  natives  left  absolutely  nothing  to  be  desired  to 
insure  success,  so. far  as  preliminaries  were  concerned. 
It  was  only  necessary  that  good  health,  endurable 
weather  and  workable  ice  should  follow.  The  expendi- 
ture of  a  million  dollars  could  not  have  placed  an  ex- 
pedition at  a  better  advantage.  The  opportunity  was 
too  good  to  be  lost.  We  therefore  returned  to  Etah  to 
prepare  for  the  quest. 

At  Etah,  practically  everything  that  was  to  be 
landed  at  Annoatok  was  placed  on  deck,  so  that  the 
dangerous  stop  beside  the  rocks  of  Annoatok  could  be 
made  a  brief  one.  The  ship  was  prepared  for  the  con- 
tingency of  a  storm. 

Late  in  the  evening  of  August  26,  the  entire 
population  of  Etah  was  taken  aboard,  the  anchor  was 

because  he  had  given  them  guns,  powder  and  needles,  belong  to  him,  is  as 
absurd  as  his  pretension  to  the  sole  ownership  of  the  North  Pole.  Al- 
though Mr.  Peary  had  spent  about  a  quarter  of  a  century  essaying  the 
task  by  means  of  luxurious  expeditions,  he  had  done  little  more  than  other 
explorers  and  did  not,  in  my  opinion,  either  secure  an  option  on  the  Pole 
or  upon  the  services  of  the  natives.  In  giving  guns,  etc.,  to  the  natives 
he  also  did  no  more  than  other  explorers,  and  the  Danes  for  many  years, 
have  done.  Nor  was  this  with  him  a  magnanimous  matter  of  gracious 
bounty,  for,  in  prodigal  return  for  all  he  gave  them,  Mr.  Peary  on  every 
expedition  secured  a  fortune  in  furs  and  ivory.  The  Eskimos  belong  to  no 
one.  For  ages  they  have  worked  out  their  rigorous  existence  without 
the  aid  of  white  men,  and  Mr.  Peary's  pretension  becomes  not  only 
absurd  but  grotesque  when  one  realizes  that  following  the  arrival  of  ships 
with  white  crews,  the  natives  have  fallen  easy  victims  of  loathsome 
epidemics,  mostly  ef  a  specific  nature,  for  which  the  trivial  gifts  of  any 
explorer  would  ill  repay  them. 


TO  THE  LIMITS  OF  NAVIGATION  71 

tripped,  and  soon  the  Bradley's  bow  put  out  on  the 
waters  of  Smith  Sound  for  Annoatok.  The  night  was 
coid  and  clear,  brightened  by  the  charm  of  color.  The 
sun  had  just  begun  to  dip  under  the  northern  horizon, 
which  marks  the  end  of  the  summer  double  days  of 
splendor  and  begins  the  period  of  storms  leading  into 
the  long  night.  Early  in  the  morning  we  were  off 
Annoatok. 

The  launch  and  all  the  dories  were  lowered  and 
filled.  Eskimo  boats  were  pressed  into  service  and 
loaded.  The  boats  were  towed  ashore.  Only  a  few 
reached  Annoatok  itself,  for  the  wind  increased  and  a 
troublesome  sea  made  haste  a  matter  of  great  im- 
portance. Things  were  pitched  ashore  anywhere  on 
the  rocks  where  a  landing  could  be  found  for  the  boats. 

The  splendid  efficiency  of  the  launch  proved  equal 
to  the  emergency,  and  in  the  course  of  about  thirteen 
hours  all  was  safely  put  on  shore  in  spite  of  dangerous 
winds  and  forbidding  seas.  That  the  goods  were  spread 
along  the  shore  for  a  distance  of  several  miles  did  not 
much  matter,  for  the  Eskimos  willingly  and  promptly 
carried  them  to  the  required  points. 

Now  the  time  had  come  for  the  return  of  the 
schooner  to  the  United  States.  Unsafe  to  remain 
longer  at  Annoatok  at  this  advanced  stage  of  the  season, 
it  was  also  imperative  that  it  go  right  on  with  barely  a 
halt  at  any  other  place.  The  departure  meant  a  com- 
plete severance  between  the  civilized  world  and  myself. 
But  I  do  not  believe,  looking  back  upon  it,  that  the  situ- 
ation seemed  as  awesome  as  might  be  supposed.  Other 
explorers  had  been  left  alone  in  the  Northland,  and  I 
had  been  through  the  experience  before. 


72  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

The  party,  so  far  as  civilized  men  were  concerned, 
was  to  be  an  unusually  small  one.  That,  however,  was 
not  from  lack  of  volunteers,  for  when  I  had  announced 
my  determination  many  of  the  crew  had  volunteered  to 
accompany  me.  Captain  Bartlett  himself  wished  to  go 
along,  but  generously  said  that  if  it  seemed  necessary 
for  him  to  go  back  with  the  schooner,  he  would  -need 
only  a  cook  and  engineer,  leaving  the  other  men 
with  me. 

I  wanted  only  one  white  companion,  however,  for 
I  knew  that  no  group  of  white  men  could  possibly 
match  the  Eskimos  in  their  own  element.  I  had  the 
willing  help  of  all  the  natives,  too,  at  my  disposal. 
More  than  that  was  not  required.  I  made  an  agree- 
ment with  them  for  their  assistance  throughout  the 
winter  in  getting  ready,  and  then  for  as  many  as  I 
wanted  to  start  with  me  toward  the  uttermost  North. 
For  my  white  companion  I  selected  Rudolph  Francke, 
now  one  of  the  Arctic  enthusiasts  on  the  yacht.  He 
had  shipped  for  the  experience  of  an  Arctic  trip.  He 
was  a  cultivated  young  German  with  a  good  scientific 
schooling.  He  was  strong,  goodnatured,  and  his  heart 
was  in  the  prospective  work.  These  were  the  qualities 
which  made  him  a  very  useful  man  as  my  sole 
companion. 

Early  on  the  morning  of  September  3,  I  bade  fare- 
well to  Mr.  Bradley,  and  not  long  afterward  the  yacht 
moved  slowly  southward  and  faded  gradually  into  the 
distant  southern  horizon.  I  was  left  alone  with  my  des- 
tiny, seven  hundred  miles  from  the  Pole. 


BEGINNING    PREPARATIONS    FOR    THE 
POLAR  DASH 

THE  ARCTIC  SOLITUDE RETROSPECTION  AND  INTROSPEC- 
TION  THE  DETERMINATION  TO  ACHIEVE PLAN- 
NING OUT  THE  DETAILS  OF  THE  CAMPAIGN — AN 
ENTIRE  TRIBE  BUSILY  AT  WORK 


THE  POLE,  THE  ROUTE,  AND  THE  INCENTIVE 

When  the  yacht  disappeared  I  felt  a  poignant 
pang  at  my  heart.  After  it  had  faded,  I  stood  gazing 
blankly  at  the  sky,  and  I  felt  the  lure  of  the  old  world. 
The  yacht  was  going  home — to  the  land  of  my  family 
and  friends.  I  was  now  alone,  and,  with  the  exception 
of  Francke,  there  was  no  white  man  among  this  tribe 
of  wild  people  with  whom  to  converse  during  the  long 
Arctic  night  that  was  approaching.  I  knew  I  should 
not  be  lonely,  for  there  was  a  tremendous  lot  of  work  to 
do,  although  I  had  unstinted  assistance.  In  every  de- 
tail, the  entire  six  months  of  labor  including  the  catching 
of  animals,  the  drying  of  meat,  the  making  of  such 
clothes  and  sledges  as  would  be  necessary,  and  the  test- 
ing of  them,  would  have  to  be  managed  by  myself. 
Turning  from  the  rocky  highland  where  I  stood,  a  wild 
thrill  stirred  my  heart.  The  hour  of  my  opportunity 


74  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

had  come.  After  years  of  unavailing  hopes  and  de- 
pressing defeats  my  final  chance  was  presented!  In 
the  determination  to  succeed,  every  drop  of  blood  in  my 
body,  every  fibre  of  me  responded. 

Why  did  I  desire  so  ardently  to  reach  the  North 
Pole?  What  did  I  hope  to  gain?  What,  if  successful, 
did  I  expect  to  reap  as  the  result  of  my  dreams  ?  These 
questions  since  have  been  asked  by  many.  I  have 
searched  the  chambers  of  my  memory  and  have  tried  to 
resolve  replies  to  myself.  The  attaining  of  the  North 
Pole  meant  at  the  time  simply  the  accomplishing  of  a 
splendid,  unprecedented  feat — a  feat  of  brain  and 
muscle  in  which  I  should,  if  successful,  signally  sur- 
pass other  men.  In  this  I  was  not  any  more  inordi- 
nately vain  or  seekful  of  glory  than  one  who  seeks  pre- 
eminence in  baseball,  running  tournaments,  or  any  other 
form  of  athletics  or  sport. 

At  the  time,  any  applause  which  the  world  might 
give,  should  I  succeed,  did  not  concern  me;  I  knew 
that  this  might  come,  but  it  did  not  enter  into  my 
speculations. 

For  years  I  had  felt  the  lure  of  the  silver  glamor 
of  the  North,  and  I  can  explain  this  no  more  than  the 
reason  why  a  poet  is  driven  to  express  himself  in  verse, 
or  why  one  child  preternaturally  develops  amazing  pro- 
ficiency in  mathematics  and  another  in  music.  Certain 
desires  are  born  or  unconsciously  developed  in  us.  I, 
with  others  before  me,  found  my  life  ambition  in  the 
conquest  of  the  Pole.  To  reach  it  would  mean,  I  knew, 
an  exultation  which  nothing  else  in  life  could  give. 

This  imaginary  spot  held  for  me  the  revealing  of 
no  great  scientific  secrets.  I  never  regarded  the  feat 


PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  POLAR  DASH    75 

as  of  any  great  scientific  value.  The  real  victory  would 
lie,  not  in  reaching  the  goal  itself,  but  in  overcoming 
the  obstacles  which  exist  in  the  way  of  it.  In  the  battle 
with  these  I  knew  there  would  be  excitement,  danger, 
necessary  expedients  to  tax  the  brain  and  heroic  feats 
to  tax  the  muscles,  the  ever  constant  incentive  which 
the  subduing  of  one  difficulty  after  another  excites. 

During  the  first  day  at  Annoatok,  after  the  yacht 
left,  I  thought  of  the  world  toward  which  it  was  going, 
of  the  continents  to  the  south  of  me,  of  the  cities  with 
their  teeming  millions,  and  of  the  men  with  their  mul- 
titudinous, conflicting  ambitions.  I  could  see,  in  my 
mind,  the  gigantic  globe  of  my  world  swinging  in  cloud- 
swept  emerald  spaces,  and  far  in  the  remote,  vast,  white 
regions  in  the  north  of  it,  far  from  the  haunts  of  men, 
thousands  of  miles  from  its  populous  cities,  beyond  the 
raging  of  its  blue-green  seas,  myself,  alone,  a  wee,  small 
atom  on  its  vast  surface,  striving  to  reach  its  hitherto 
unattained  goal.  I  felt,  as  I  thought  of  my  anticipa- 
tion and  lonely  quest,  a  sense  of  the  terrible  over- 
whelming hugeness  of  the  earth,  and  the  poignant 
loneliness  any  soul  must  feel  when  it  embarks  upon 
some  splendid  solitary  destiny. 

Beyond  and  above  me  I  visioned  the  unimaginable, 
blinding  white  regions  of  ice  and  cold,  about  which,  like 
a  golden-crowned  sentinel,  with  face  of  flame,  the 
circling  midnight  sun  kept  guard.  Upon  this  desolate, 
awe-inspiring  stage — unchanged  since  the  days  of  its 
designing — I  saw  myself  attempting  to  win  in  the  most 
spectacular  and  difficult  marathon  for  the  testing  of 
human  strength,  courage  and  perseverance,  of  body 
and  brain,  which  God  has  offered  to  man.  I  could  see 


76  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

myself,  in  my  fancy  pictures,  invading  those  roaring 
regions,  struggling  over  icy  lands  in  the  dismal  twilight 
of  the  Arctic  morning,  and  venturing,  with  a  few  com- 
panions, upon  the  lifeless,  wind-swept  Polar  sea.  A 
black  mite,  I  saw  myself  slowly  piercing  those  white 
and  terrible  spaces,  braving  terrific  storms,  assailing 
green,  adamantine  barriers  of  ice,  crossing  the  swift- 
flowing,  black  rivers  of  those  ice  fields,  and  stoutly  per- 
sisting until,  successful,  I  stood  alone,  a  victor,  upon  the 
world's  pinnacle! 

This  thought  gave  me  wild  joy.  That  I,  one  white 
man,  might  alone  succeed  in  this  quest  gave  me  an  im- 
petus which  only  single-handed  effort  and  the  prospect 
of  single-handed  success  can  give.  There  was  pleasure 
in  the  thought  that,  in  this  effort,  I  was  indebted  to  no 
one ;  no  one  had  expended  money  for  me  or  my  trip ;  no 
white  men  were  to  risk  their  lives  with  me.  Whether 
it  resulted  in  success  or  defeat,  I  alone  should  exult  or 
I  alone  should  suffer.  I  was  the  mascot  of  no  clique  of 
friends,  nor  the  pawn  of  scientists  who  might  find  a 
suppositions  and  mythical  glory  in  the  reflected  light  of 
another's  achievement.  The  quest  was  personal;  the 
pleasure  of  success  must  be  personal. 

Yet,  I  want  you  to  understand  this  thing  was  no 
casual  jaunt  with  me.  All  my  life  hinged  about  it,  my 
hopes  were  bent  upon  it;  the  doing  of  it  was  part  of 
me.  My  plans  of  action  were  not  haphazard  and  hair- 
brained.  Logically  and  clearly,  I  mapped  out  a  cam- 
paign. It  was  based  upon  experience  in  known  con- 
ditions, experience  gathered  after  years  of  discourage- 
ment and  failure. 

At    Annoatok    we    erected    a   house    of   packing 


ON   THE   CHASE    FOR    BEAK 
TITE    ROX-IIOrSE    AT    AXXOATOK    AND    ITS    WINTER    EXVIROXMKXT 


PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  POLAR  DASH         77 

boxes.*  The  building  of  the  house,  which  was  to  be  both 
storehouse  and  workshop,  was  a  simple  matter.  The 
walls  were  made  of  the  packing  boxes,  especially 
selected  of  uniform  size  for  this  purpose. 

Enclosing  a  space  thirteen  by  sixteen  feet,  the 
cases  were  quickly  piled  up.  The  walls  were  held 
together  by  strips  of  wood,  the  joints  sealed  with 
pasted  paper,  with  the  addition  of  a  few  long  boards.  A 
really  good  roof  was  made  by  using  the  covers  of  the 
boxes  as  shingles.  A  blanket  of  turf  over  this  con- 
fined the  heat  and  permitted,  at  the  same  time,  healthful 
circulation  of  air. 

We  slept  under  our  own  roof  at  the  end  of  the 
first  day.  Our  new  house  had  the  great  advantage 
of 'containing  within  it  all  our  possessions  within  easy 

*One  of  the  charges  which  Mr.  Peary  circulated  before  he  returned 
North  in  1908,  was,  that  I  violated  a  rule  of  Polar  ethics  by  not  applying 
for  a  license  to  seek  the  Pole,  nor  giving  notice  of  my  proposed  trip. 
There  is  no  such  rule  in  Polar  ethics.  The  following  letter,  however,  to  his 
press  agent,  Mr.  Herbert  Bridgman,  dated  Etah,  August  26,  1907,  answers 
the  charge: 

"My  dear  Bridgman:  I  have  hit  upon  a  new  route  to  the  North  Pole 
and  will  stay  to  try  it.  By  way  of  Buchanan  Bay  and  Ellesmere  Land 
and  northward  through  Nansen  Strait  over  the  Polar  sea  seems  to  me 
to  be  a  very  good  route.  There  will  be  game  to  the  82°,  and  here  are 
natives  and  dogs  for  the  task.  So  here  ic  for  the  Pole.  Mr.  Bradley 
will  tell  you  the  rest.  Kind  regards  to  all — F.  A.  Cook." 

"It  will  be  remembered,"  continued  Mr.  Bridgman,  in  his  press  reports, 
"that  Dr.  Cook,  accompanied  by  John  R.  Bradley,  Captain  Moses  Bartlett, 
and  a  number  of  Eskimos,  left  North  Sidney,  N.  S.,  early  last  July  on 
the  American  Auxiliary  Schooner  Yacht  John  R.  Bradley,  which  landed 
the  party  at  Smith  Sound.  Mr.  Bradley  returned  to  North  Sydney  on  the 
yacht  on  October  1.  The  expedition  is  provisioned  for  two  years  and  fully 
equipped  with  dogs  and  sledges  for  the  trip.  The  party  Is  wintering  thirty 
miles  further  north  than  Peary  did  two  years  ago." 

And  yet  Bridgman,  in  line  with  the  indefatigable  pro-Peary 
boosters,  later  tried  to  lead  the  public  to  believe  that  I  had  nothing  but 
gum  drops  with  which  to  undertake  a  trip  to  the  Pole.  This  same  Bridg- 
man also  printed  in  what  Brooklyn  people  call  the  "Standard  Liar"  the 
fake  about  my  using,  as  my  own,  photographs  said  to  belong  to  the  news- 
paper cub,  Herbert  Berri. 

For  fifteen  years  Bridgman  used  my  photographs  and  my  material  for 
his  lectures  on  the  Arctic  and  Antarctic,  generally  without  giving  credit. 
Evidently,  my  work  and  my  results  were  good  enough  for  him  to  borrow 


78  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

reach  at  all  times.  When  anything  was  needed  in  the 
way  of  supplies,  all  we  hacl  to  do  was  to  open  a  box 
in  the  wall. 

The  house  completed,  we  immediately  began  the 
work  of  building  sledges,  and  the  equally  important 
work,  at  which  a  large  proportion  of  the  Eskimos  were 
at  once  set,  of  making  up  furs  into  clothing.  Accord- 
ing to  my  plans,  each  one  of  us  embarking  in  the  Polar 
journey  would  have  to  carry  two  suits  of  fur  clothing. 
In  the  Arctic  regions,  especially  when  men  are  march- 
ing to  the  limit  of  their  strength  every  day,  the  bodily 
heat  puts  the  clothing  into  such  condition  that  the  only 
safe  way,  if  health  is  to  be  preserved,  is  to  change  suits 
frequently,  while  the  perspiration-soaked  furs  are  laid 
out  to  dry. 

The   Eskimos   had   also   to   prepare   for   winter. 

as  Peary  dia.  So  long  as  my  usefulness  served  the  Bridgman-Peary  inter- 
ests, there  was  no  question  of  my  credibility,  but  when  my  success  inter- 
fered with  the  monopoly  of  the  fruits  of  Pplar  attainment,  then  I  was  to 
be  striped  with  dark  lines  of  dishonor. 

The  most  amusing  and  also  the  most  significant  incident  of  the  Bridg- 
man-Peary humbug  was  the  faked  wireless  message  which  Bridgman 
printed  for  Peary  in  his  paper.  Peary  claims  he  reached  the  Pole  on  April 
6,  1909.  In  the  Standard  Union,  Brooklyn,  of  April  14,  1909  (eight  days 
after  the  alleged  discovery),  Peary's  friend  H.  L.  Bridgman,  one  of  the 
owners,  printed  the  following: 

"PEARY  DUE  NORTH  POLE  TWELVE  M.,  THURSDAY" 
(APRIL  15,  1909). 

Is  Mr.  Bridgman  a  psychic  medium?  How,  with  Peary  thousands  of 
miles  away,  hundreds  of  miles  from  the  most  northerly  wireless  station, 
did  he  sense  the  amazing  feat?  Were  he  and  Peary  in  telepathic  communi- 
cation? Or,  rather,  does  this  not  seem  to  point  to  an  agreement  entered 
into  before  the  departure  of  Peary,  about  a  year  before  the  attempt  was 
made,  to  announce  on  a  certain  day  the  "discovery"  of  the  Pole? 

From  other  sources  we  learn  that  the  timing  of  the  arrival  of  the  ship 
at  Cape  Sheridan  seems  to  have  been  made  good,  but  in  an  apparent  effort 
on  the  part  of  Peary  to  keep  faith  with  Bridgman  on  April  15,  we  find 
him  in  trouble.  If  Peary  arranged  his  "discovery"  for  this  agreed  date,  he 
would  have  had  to  take  nine  days  for  his  return  trip  from  the  Pole.  This 
would  increase  his  speed  limit  50  per  cent.,  and  since  he  is  regarded  with 
suspicion  on  his  speed  limits,  to  make  his  "Pole  Discovery"  story  fit  in 
between  the  known  time  when  he  left  Bartlett  and  the  time  when  he  got 
back  to  the  ship,  he  was  compelled  to  break  faith  with  Bridgman  and  \vent 
back  nine  days  on  his  calendar,  placing  the  date  of  Pole  reaching  at  April  6. 


PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  POLAR  DASH    79 

Tents  of  sealskin  are  inhabitable  only  in  the  summer 
time.  For  the  coming  period  of  darkness  and  bitter 
cold,  they  made  igloos  of  stone  and  snow. 

Meanwhile,  they  were  not  in  the  least  averse  to 
agreeable  relaxation.  I  had  with  me  a  good  supply  of 
tea,  and  was  in  the  habit  of  drinking  a  cup  of  it  with 
Francke  about  four  o'clock  every  afternoon.  Observ- 
ing this,  the  Eskimos  at  once  began  to  present  them- 
selves at  the  tea  hour.  Fortunately,  tea  was  one  of  the 
supplies  of  which  I  had  brought  a  good  deal  for  the 
sake  of  pleasing  the  natives,  and  it  was  not  long  before 
I  had  a  very  large  and  gossipy  afternoon  tea  party 
every  day,  in  this  northernmost  human  settlement  of 
the  globe. 

I  planned  to  superintend  every  detail  of  progress, 
as  far  as  it  concerned  our  journey.  I  could  watch  the 
men,  too,  and  see  which  ones  promised  to  be  the  best 
to  accompany  me.  And,  what  was  a  most  important 
point,  I  could  also  perfect  my  final  plans  for  the  ad- 
vance right  at  my  final  base. 

I  aimed  to  reach  the  top  of  the  globe  in  the  angle 
between  Alaska  and  Greenland,  a  promising  route 
through  a  new  and  lonesome  region  which  had  not  been 
tried,  abandoning  what  has  come  to  be  called  the 
" American  Route."  I  should  strike  westward  and  then 
northward,  working  new  trails.  With  Annoatok  as  a 
base  of  operations,  I  planned  to  carry  sufficient  supplies 
over  Schley  Land  and  along  the  west  coast  of  the  game 
lands,  trusting  that  the  game  along  this  region  would 
furnish  sufficient  supplies  en  route  to  the  shores  of  the 
Polar  sea.  This  journey  to  land's  end  would  also  afford 
a  test  of  every  article  of  equipment  needed  in  the  field 
work,  and  would  enable  us  to  choose  finally  from  a 


80  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

selected  number  of  Eskimos  those  most  able  to  endure 
the  rigors  of  the  unlimited  journey  which  lay  before  us. 
I  sent  out  a  few  hunters  along  the  intended  line 
to  seek  for  haunts  of  game,  but  I  was  not  surprised  that 
their  searching  in  the  dark  was  practically  unsuccessful, 
and  it  merely  meant  that  I  must  depend  upon  my  previ- 
ous knowledge  of  conditions.  I  knew  from  the  general 
reports  of  the  natives,  and  from  the  explorations  of 
Sverdrup,  that  the  beginning  of  the  intended  route 
offered  abundant  game,  and  the  indications  were  that 
further  food  would  likewise  be  found  as  we  advanced. 
The  readiness  with  which  the  Eskimos  declared  them- 
selves ready  to  trust  to  the  food  supply  of  the  unknown 
region  was  highly  encouraging. 

To  start  from  my  base  with  men  and  dogs  in  superb 
condition,  with  their  bodies  nourished  with  wholesome 
fresh  meat  instead  of  the  nauseating  laboratory  stuff 
too  often  given  to  men  in  the  North,  was  of  vital  im- 
portance; and  if  the  men  and  dogs  could  afterwards 
be  supported  in  great  measure  by  the  game  of  the 
region  through  which  we  were  to  pass,  it  would  be  of 
an  importance  more  vital  still.  If  my  information  was 
well  founded  and  my  general  conjectures  correct,  I 
should  have  advantages  which  had  not  been  possessed 
by  any  other  leader  of  a  Polar  expedition.  The  new 
route  seemed  to  promise,  also,  immunity  from  the 
highly  disturbing  effects  of  certain  North  Greenland 
currents.  In  all,  the  chances  seemed  not  unfavorable. 
With  busy  people  hard  at  work  about  me,  I  knew 
that  the  months  of  the  long  night  would  pass  rapidly 
by.  There  was  much  to  do,  and  with  the  earliest  dawn 
of  the  morning  of  the  next  year  we  must  be  ready  to 
start  for  the  Pole. 


THE  CURTAIN  OF  NIGHT  DROPS 

TRIBE  OF  TWO  HUNDRED  AND  FIFTY  NATIVES  BUSILY 
BEGIN  PREPARATIONS  FOR  THE  POLAR  DASH EXCIT- 
ING HUNTS  FOR  THE  UNICORN  AND  OTHER  GAME 

FROM    ANNOATOK    TO    CAPE    YORK EVERY    ANIMAL 

CAUGHT  BEARING  UPON  THE  SUCCESS  OF  THE 
VENTURE — THE  GRAY-GREEN  GLOOM  OF  TWILIGHT 
IN  WHICH  THE  ESKIMO  WOMEN  COMMUNICATE 
WITH  THE  SOULS  OF  THE  DEAD 

VI 

THE  SUNSET  OF  1907 

Winter,  long-lasting,  dark  and  dismal,  approached. 
To  me  it  was  to  be  a  season  of  feverish  labor  in  which 
every  hand  at  work  and  every  hour  employed  counted 
in  the  problem  of  success.  While  the  hands  of  the  entire 
tribe  would  be  busy,  and  while  I  should  direct  and  help 
in  the  making  of  sleds,  catching  of  game,  preparing  of 
meat,  I  knew  that  my  mind  would  find  continual  excite- 
ment in  dreams  of  my  quest,  in  anticipating  and  solving 
its  difficulties,  in  feeling  the  bounding  pulse  of  the  dash 
over  the  ice  of  the  Polar  sea,  with  dogs  joyously  bark- 
ing, whips  cracking  the  air,  and  the  reappearing  sun 
paving  our  pathway  with  liquid  gold.  In  the  labor  of 
the  long  winter  which  I  began  to  map  out  I  knew  I 
should  find  ceaseless  zest,  for  the  pursuit  of  every 
narwhal,  every  walrus,  every  fox  I  should  regard  with 


82  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

abated  suspense,  each  one  bearing  upon  my  chances;  in 
the  employment  of  every  pair  of  hands  I  should  hang 
with  an  eager  interest,  the  expediency  and  excellence  of 
the  work  making  for  success  or  failure.  From  this  time 
onward  everything  of  my  life,  every  native,  every  occur- 
rence began  to  have  some  bearing  upon  the  dominating 
task  to  which  I  had  set  myself. 

With  the  advance  of  winter,  storms  of  frightful 
ferocity  began  to  arise.  Inasmuch  as  we  had  stored 
meat  and  blubber  in  large  quantities  about  our  camp,  it 
was  not  necessary  at  these  times  to  venture  out  to  dig 
up  supplies  from  great  depths  of  snow  drift.  During 
these  periods  hands  were  employed  busily  inside  the 
igloos.  Although  a  large  quantity  of  animals  and  furs 
had  been  gathered  by  the  hunters  before  our  arrival,  we 
now  unexpectedly  discovered  that  the  supply  was  in- 
adequate. According  to  my  plans,  a  large  party  of 
picked  natives  would  accompany  me  to  land's  end  and 
somewhat  beyond  on  the  Polar  sea  when  I  started  for 
my  dash  in  the  coming  spring.  As  spring  is  the  best 
hunting  season,  it  was  therefore  imperative  to  secure 
sufficient  advance  provisions  for  the  families  of  these 
men  in  addition  to  preparing  requisites  for  my  expedi- 
tion. So  the  early  days  of  the  winter  would  have  to  be 
busily  occupied  by  the  men  in  a  ceaseless  hunt  for  game, 
and  later,  even  when  the  darkness  had  fully  fallen,  the 
moonlight  days  and  nights  would  thus  have  to  be 
utilized  also. 

In  the  Polar  cycle  of  the  seasons  there  are  peculiar 
conditions  which  apply  to  circumstances  and  movements. 
As  the  word,  seasons,  is  ordinarily  understood,  there  are 
but  two,  a  winter  season  and  a  summer  season — a  winter 
season  of  nine  months  and  a  summer  of  three  months. 


THE  CURTAIN  OF  NIGHT  DROPS  83 

But,  for  more  convenient  division  of  the  yearly 
periods,  it  is  best  to  retain  the  usual  cycle  of  four  sea- 
sons. Eskimos  call  the  winter  "ookiah,"  which  also 
means  year,  and  the  summer  "onsah."  Days  are  "sleeps." 
The  months  are  moons,  and  the  periods  are  named  in  ac- 
cord with  the  movements  of  various  creatures  of  the 
chase. 

In  early  September  at  Annoatok  the  sun  dips  con- 
siderably under  the  northern  horizon.  There  is  no 
night.  At  sunset  and  at  sunrise  storm  clouds  hide  the 
bursts  of  color  which  are  the  glory  of  twilight,  and  the 
electric  afterglow  is  generally  lost  in  a  dull  gray. 

The  gloom  of  the  coming  winter  night  now  thick- 
ens. The  splendor  of  the  summer  day  has  gone.  A  day 
of  six  months  and  a  night  of  six  months  is  often  ascribed 
to  the  Polar  regions  as  a  whole,  but  this  is  only  true  of  a 
very  small  area  about  the  Pole.  , 

As  we  come  south,  the  sun  slips  under  the  horizon 
for  an  ever-increasing  part  of  each  twenty-four  hours. 
Preceding  and  following  the  night,  as  we  come  from  the 
Pole,  there  is  a  period  of  day  and  night  which  lengthens 
with  the  descent  of  latitude. 

It  is  this  period  which  enables  us  to  retain  the  names 
of  the  usual  seasons — summer  for  the  double  days,  fall 
for  the  period  of  the  setting  sun.  This  season  begins 
when  the  sun  first  dips  under  the  ice  at  midnight  for  a 
few  moments.  These  moments  increase  rapidly,  yet 
one  hardly  appreciates  that  the  sun  is  departing  until 
day  and  night  are  of  equal  length,  for  the  night  remains 
light,  though  not  cheerful.  Then  the  day  rapidly  short- 
ens and  darkens,  and  the  sun  sinks  until  at  last  there  is 
but  a  mere  glimmer  of  the  glory  of  day.  Winter  is  lim- 


84  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

ited  to  the  long  night,  and  spring  applies  to  the  days  of 
the  rising  sun,  a  period  corresponding  to  the  autumn 
days  of  the  setting  sun. 

At  Annoatok  the  midnight  sun  is  first  seen  on 
April  23.  It  dips  in  the  sea  on  August  19.  It  thus  en- 
circles the  horizon,  giving  summer  and  continuous  day 
for  one  hundred  and  eighteen  days.  It  sets  at  mid- 
day on  October  24,  and  is  absent  a  period  of  pro- 
longed night  corresponding  to  the  day,  and  it 
rises  on  February  19.  The  Arctic  air,  with  its  low 
temperature  and  its  charge  of  frosted  humidity,  so 
distorts  the  sun's  'rays  that  when  low  it  is  frequently 
lifted  one  or  two  diameters;  therefore,  the  exact  day  or 
hour  for  sunrise  or  sunset  does  not  correspond  to  mathe- 
matical calculations.  Then  follow  days  of  spring. 

In  the  fall,  when  the  harmonizing  influence  of  the 
sun  is  withdrawn,  there  begins  a  battle  of  the  elements 
which  continues  until  stilled  by  the  hopeless  frost  of 
early  night. 

At  this  time,  although  field  work  was  painful,  the 
needs  of  our  venture  forced  us  to  persistent  action  in 
the  chase  of  walrus,  seal,  narwhal  and  white  whale.  We 
thus  harvested  food  and  fuel. 

Before  winter  ice  spread  over  the  sea,  ptarmigan, 
hare  and  reindeer  were  sought  on  land  to  supply  the 
table  during  the  long  night  with  delicacies,  while  bear 
and  fox  pleased  the  palates  of  the  Eskimos,  and  their 
pelts  clothed  all. 

Many  long  journeys  were  undertaken  to  secure 
an  important  supply  of  grass  to  pad  boots  and 
mittens  and  also  to  secure  moss,  which  serves  as  wick  for 
the  Eskimo  lamp.  During  the  months  of  September 


THE  CURTAIN  OF  NIGHT  DROPS  85 

and  October,  along  the  entire  Greenland  coast,  the  Es- 
kimos were  engaged  in  a  feverish  quest  for  reserve  sup- 
plies. Shortly  after  my  arrival,  word  had  been  carried 
from  village  to  village  that  I  was  at  Annoatok,  and,  in- 
tending to  make  a  dash  for  the  "Big  Nail,"  desired  the 
help  of  the  entire  tribe.  Intense  and  spontaneous 
activity  followed.  Knowing  the  demands  of  the  North, 
and  of  such  work  as  I  planned,  the  natives,  without  spe- 
cific instructions  from  me  and  with  only  a  brief  outline 
of  the  planned  Polar  campaign  which  was  sent  from 
village  to  village,  immediately  got  busy  gathering  the 
needed  things.  They  knew  better  than  I  where  to  go 
for  certain  game,  and  where  certain  desirable  things  were 
obtainable.  This  relieved  me  of  a  great  responsibility. 
Each  local  group  of  natives  was  to  perform  some  impor- 
tant duty,  suited  to  its  available  resources,  in  gathering 
the  tremendous  amount  of  material  required  for  our 
trip.  Each  village  had  it's  peculiar  game  advantages. 

In  some  places  foxes  and  hares,  the  skins  of  which 
were  necessary  for  coats  and  stockings,  were  abundant, 
and  the  Eskimos  must  not  only  gather  the  greatest 
number  possible,  but  prepare  the  skins  and  make  them 
into  properly  fitting  garments.  In  other  places  reindeer 
were  plentiful.  The  skin  of  these  was  needed  for  sleep- 
ing bags,  while  the  sinew  was  required  for  thread.  In 
still  other  places  seal  was  the  luck  of  the  chase;  its  skin 
was  one  of  our  most  important  needs.  Of  it  boots  were 
made,  and  an  immense  amount  of  line  and  lashings 
prepared. 

Thus,  in  one  way  or  another,  every  man  and  woman 
and  most  of  the  children  of  this  tribe  of  two  hundred  and 
fifty  people  were  kept  busy  in  the  service  of  the  expe- 


86  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

dition.  The  work  was  well  done,  and  with  much  better 
knowledge  of  the  fitness  of  things  than  could  have  been 
possessed  by  any  possible  gathering  of  alien  white  men. 

The  quest  of  the  walrus  and  the  narwhal  came  in 
our  own  immediate  plan  of  adventure,  although  the  nar- 
whal, called  by  whale  fishers  the  unicorn,  does  not  often 
come  under  the  eye  of  the  white  man.  It  afforded  for 
a  brief  spell  good  results  in  sport  and  useful  material. 
Its  blubber  is  the  pride  of  every  housekeeper,  for  it  gives 
a  long,  hot  flame  to  the  lamp,  with  no  smoke  to  spot  the 
igloo  finery.  The  skin  is  regarded  as  quite  a  delicacy. 
Cut  into  squares,  it  looks  and  tastes  like  scallops,  with 
only  a  slight  aroma  of  train  oil.  The  meat  dries  easily, 
and  is  thus  prized  as  an  appetizer  or  as  a  lunch  to  be 
eaten  en  route  in  sled  or  kayak.  In  this  shape  it  was  an 
extremely  useful  thing  for  us,  for  it  took  the  place  of 
pemmican  on  our  less  urgent  journeys. 

Narwhals  played  in  schools,  far  off  shore,  and 
usually  along  the  edges  of  some  large  ice  field,  their  long 
ivory  tusks  rising  under  spouts  of  breath  and  spray. 
Whenever  this  glad  sight  was  noted,  every  kayak  about 
camp  was  manned,  and  the  skin  canoes  went  flittering 
like  birds  over  the  water.  Some  of  the  Eskimos  climbed 
to  the  ice  fields  and  delivered  their  harpoons  from  a 
secure  footing.  Others  hid  behind  floating  fragments 
of  heavy  ice  and  made  a  sudden  rush  as  the  animals 
passed.  Still  others  came  up  in  the  rear,  for  the  nar- 
whal cannot  easily  see  backward,  and  does  not  often  turn 
to  watch  its  enemies,  its  speed  being  so  fast  that  it  can 
easily  keep  ahead  of  them. 

In  these  exciting  hunts  I  participated  with  eager 
delight,  and  by  proxy  mentally  engaged  in  every  en- 


THE  CURTAIN  OF  NIGHT  DROPS  87 

counter.  For,  in  this  sea  game,  existed  food  supplies 
which,  instead  of  entirely  confining  myself  to  pemmican, 
I  planned  also  to  use  on  my  Polar  journey.  As  the  skin 
boats,  like  bugs,  sped  over  the  water,  I  felt  the  move- 
ment of  them  surge  in  my  brain;  with  the  upraising  of 
each  swift-darting  native's  arm  I  felt,  as  it  were,  my 
heart  stop  with  bated  suspense.  With  every  failure  I 
experienced  a  throb  of  dismay. '  With  the  hauling  in  of 
each  slimy  beast  I  felt,  as  it  were,  nearer  my  goal. 

Narwhal  hunting,  in  itself,  and  without  the  added 
spur  of  personal  interest,  which  I  had,  is  brimful  of 
thrilling  sport.  The  harpoon  is  always  delivered  at 
close  range.  Whenever  the  dragging  float  marks  the 
end  of  the  line  in  tow  of  the  frightened  creature,  the  line 
of  skin  canoes  follows.  Timid  by  nature  and  fearing  to 
rise  for  breath,  the  narwhal  plunges  along  until  nearly 
strangled.  When  he  does  come  up,  there  are  likely  to 
be  several  Eskimos  near  with  drawn  lances,  which  in- 
flict deep  gashes. 

Again  the  narwhal  plunges  deep  down,  with  but 
one  breath,  and  hurries  along  as  best  it  can.  But  its 
speed  slackens  and  a  line  of  crimson  marks  its  hidden 
path.  Loss  of  blood  and  want  of  air  do  not  give  it  a 
chance  to  fight.  Again  it  comes  up  with  a  spout. 
Again  the,  lances  are  hurled. 

The  battle  continues  for  several  hours,  with  many 
exciting  adventures,  but  in  the  end  the  narwhal  always 
succumbs,  offering  a  prize  of  several  thousands  of 
pounds  of  meat  and  blubber.  Victory  as  a  rule  is  not 
gained  until  the  hunters  are  far  from  home,  and  also  far 
from  the  shore  line.  But  the  Eskimo  is  a  courageous 
hunter  and  an  intelligent  seaman. 


88  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

To  the  huge  carcass  frail  kayaks  are  hitched  in  a 
long  line.  Towing  is  slow,  wind  and  sea  combining  to 
make  the  task  difficult  and  dangerous.  One  sees  noth- 
ing of  the  narwhal  and  very  little  of  the  kayak,  for  dash- 
ing seas  wash  over  the  little  craft,  but  the  double-bladed 
paddles  see-saw  with  the  regularity  of  a  pendulum. 
Homecoming  takes  many  hours  and  demands  a  pro- 
digious amount  of  hard  work,  but  there  is  energy  to 
spare,  for  a  wealth  of  meat  and  fat  is  the  culmination  of 
all  Eskimo  ambition. 

Seven  of  these  ponderous  animals  were  brought  in 
during  five  days,  making  a  heap  of  more  than  forty 
thousand  pounds  of  food  and  fuel.  The  sight  of  this 
tremulous,  blubbering  mass  filled  my  heart  with  joy. 
Our  success  was  not  too  soon,  for  now  the  narwhals  sud- 
denly disappeared,  and  we  saw  no  more  of  them.  About 
this  time  three  white  whales  were  also  obtained  at  Etah 
by  a  similar  method  of  hunting. 

With  the  advent  of  actual  winter,  storms  swept 
over  the  land  and  sea  with  such  fury  that  it  was  no  longer 
safe  to  venture  out  on  the  water  in  kayaks.  After  the 
catching  of  several  walruses  from  boats,  sea  hunting 
now  was  confined  to  the  quest  of  seal  through  young  ice. 
As  such  hunting  would  soon  be  limited  to  only  a  few 
open  spaces  near  prominent  headlands,  an  industrious 
pursuit  was  feverishly  engaged  in  at  every  village  from 
Annoatok  to  Cape  York,  and  hour  by  hour,  day  by  day, 
until  the  hunt  of  necessity  changed  from  sea  to  land,  the 
husky  natives  engaged  in  seal  catching.  As  yet  we  had 
no  caribou  meat,  and  the  little  auks,  which  had  been 
gathered  in  nets  during  the  summer,  with  the  eider-duck 
bagged  later,  soon  disappeared  as  a  steady  diet.  We 


THE  CURTAIN  OF  NIGHT  DROPS  89 

must  now  procure  such  available  land  game  as  hare, 
ptarmigan  and  reindeer,  for  we  had  not  yet  learned  to 
eat  with  a  relish  the  fishy,  liver-like  substance  which  is 
characteristic  of  all  marine  mammals. 

Guns  and  ammunition  were  now  distributed,  and 
when  the  winds  were  easy  enough  to  allow  one  to  ven- 
ture out,  every  Eskimo  sought  the  neighboring  hills. 
Francke  also  took  his  exercise  with  a  gun  on  his  shoulder. 

The  combined  efforts  resulted  in  a  long  line  of 
ptarmigan,  two  reindeer  and  sixteen  hares.  As  snow 
covered  the  upper  slopes,  the  game  was  forced  down 
near  the  sea,  where  we  could  still  hope  to  hunt  in  the 
feeble  light  of  the  early  part  of  the  night. 

With  a  larder  fairly  stockejl  and  good  prospects 
for  other  tasty  meats,  we  were  spared  the  anxiety  of  a 
winter  without  supplies.  Francke  was  an  ideal  chef  in 
the  preparation  of  this  game  to  good  effect,  for  he  had  a 
delightful  way  of  making  our  primitive  provisions  quite 
appetizing. 

In  the  middle  of  October  fox  skins  were  prime,  and 
then  new  steel  traps  were  distributed  and  set  near  the 
many  caches.  By  this  time  all  the  Eskimos  had  aban- 
doned their  sealskin  tents  and  were  snugly  settled  in 
their  winter  igloos.  The  ground  was  covered  with 
snow,  and  the  sea  was  almost  entirely  frozen. 

Everybody  was  busy  preparing  for  the  coming  cold 
and  night.  The  temperature  was  about  20°  below  zero. 
Severe  storms  were  becoming  less  frequent,  and  the  air, 
though  colder,  was  less  humid  and  less  disagreeable.  An 
ice-foot  was  formed  by  the  tides  along  shore,  and  over 
this  the  winter  sledging  was  begun  by  short  excursions 
to  bait  the  fox  traps  and  gather  the  foxes. 


90  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Our  life  now  resolved  itself  into  a  systematic 
routine  of  work,  which  was  practically  followed  through- 
out the  succeeding  long  winter  night.  About  the  box- 
house  in  which  Francke  and  I  lived  were  igloos  housing 
eight  to  twelve  families.  The  tribe  of  two  hundred  and 
fifty  was  distributed  in  a  range  of  villages  along  the 
coast,  an  average  of  four  families  constituting  a  com- 
munity. Early  each  morning  Koo-loo-ting-wah  would 
bang  at  my  door,  enter,  and  I  would  drowsily  awaken 
while  he  freshened  the  fire.  Rising,  we  would  prepare 
hot  coffee  and  partake  of  breakfast  with  biscuits.  By 
seven  o'clock — according  to  our  standard  of  time — five 
or  six  of  the  natives  would  arrive,  and,  after  a  liberal 
libation  of  coffee,  begin  work.  I  taught  them  to  help 
me  in  the  making  of  my  hickory  sleds.  Some  I  taught 
to  use  modern  carpentering  instruments,  which  I  had 
with  me.  Another  group  was  schooled  in  bending  the 
resilient  but  tough  hickory.  This  was  done  by  wrapping 
old  cloths  about  the  wood  and  steeping  it  in  hot  water. 
Others  engaged,  as  the  days  went  by,  in  making  dog 
harness,  articles  of  winter  clothing,  and  drying  meat. 
Not  an  hour  was  lost  during  the  day.  At  noon  we 
paused  for  a  bite  of  frozen  meat  and  hot  tea.  Then  we 
fell  to  work  again  without  respite  until  five  or  six  o'clock. 

Meanwhile,  beginning  in  the  early  morning  of  our 
steadily  darkening  days,  other  male  members  of  the  tribe 
pursued  game.  Others  again  followed  a  routine  of 
scouring  of  the  villages  and  collecting  all  the  furs  and 
game  which  had  been  caught.  The  women  of  the  tribe, 
in  almost  every  dimly  lighted  igloo,  were  no  less  indus- 
trious. To  them  fell  the  task  of  assisting  in  drying  the 
fur  skins,  preparing  dried  meat  and  making  our  cloth- 


THE  CURTAIN  OF  NIGHT  DROPS  91 

ing.  Throughout  the  entire  days  they  sat  in  their  snow 
and  stone  houses,  masses  of  ill-smelling  furs  before  them, 
cutting  the  skins  and  sewing  them  into  serviceable  gar- 
ments. This  work  I  often  watched,  passing  from  igloo 
to  igloo,  with  an  interest  that  verged  on  anxiety;  for 
upon  the  strength,  thickness  and  durability  of  these  de- 
pended my  life,  and  that  of  the  companions  I  should 
choose,  on  the  frigid  days  which  would  inevitably  come 
on  my  journey  Poleward.  But  these  broad-faced, 
patient  women  did  their  work  well.  Their  skill  is  quite 
remarkable.  They  took  my  measurements,  for  instance, 
by  roughly  sizing  up  my  old  garments  and  by  measuring 
me  by  sight.  Garments  were  made  to  fit  snugly  after 
the  preliminary  making  by  cutting  out  or  inserting 
patches  of  fur.  Needles  among  the  natives  are  indeed 
precious.  So  valuable  are  they  that  if  a  point  or  eye  is 
broken,  with  infinite  skill  and  patience  the  broken  end 
is  heated  and  flattened,  and  by  means  of  a  bow  drill  a 
new  eye  is  bored.  A  new  point  is  with  equal  skill  shaped 
on  local  stones.  With  marvelous  patience  they  make 
their  own  thread  by  drying  and  stripping  caribou  or 
narwhale  sinews. 

Were  it  not  for  their  extraordinary  eyesight,  such 
work,  under  such  conditions,  would  be  impossible.  But 
in  the  dark  the  natives  can  espy  things  invisible  to  white 
men.  This  owl-sight  enables  them  to  hunt,  if  necessary, 
in  almost  pitch  darkness,  and  to  perform  tedious  feats 
of  hand  skill  which,  in  such  dim  light,  an  alien  would 
bungle.  I  noticed,  with  much  curiosity,  that  when  the 
natives  inspected  any  photograph  or  object  which  I  gave 
them  they  always  held  it  upside  down.  All  objects,  as 
is  well  known,  are  reflected  in  the  retina  thus,  and  it  is 


92  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

our  familiarity  with  the  size  and  comparative  relations 
of  things  which  enables  the  brain  to  visualize  an  object 
or  scene  at  its  proper  angle.  This  strange,  instinctive 
act  of  the  natives  might  form  an  interesting  chapter  in 
optics. 

Meanwhile,  busy  and  interested  in  the  beginning  of 
our  various  pursuits,  the  great  crust  which  was  to  hold 
down  the  sea  for  so  many  months,  closed  and  thickened. 

During  the  last  days  of  brief  sunshine  the  weather 
cleared,  and  at  noon  on  October  24  everybody  sought 
the  open  for  a  last  glimpse  of  the  dying  day.  There 
was  a  charm  of  color  and  glitter,  but  no  one  seemed  quite 
happy  as  the  sun  sank  under  the  southern  ice,  for  it  was 
not  to  rise  again  for  one  hundred  and  eighteen  days. 

Just  prior  to  the  falling  of  darkness,  with  that  in- 
stinctive and  forced  hilarity  with  which  aboriginal  beings 
seek  to  ward  off  an  impending  calamity,  the  Eskimos 
engaged  in  their  annual  sporting  event.  It  is  a  curious 
sight,  indeed,  to  behold  a  number  of  excited,  laughing 
Eskimos  gathering  about  two  champion  dogs  which  are 
to  fight.  Although  the  zest  of  betting  is  unknown,  the 
natives  regard  dog  fights  with  much  the  same  eager  ex- 
citement as  a  certain  type  of  sporting  man  does  a  cock 
encounter.  Sometimes  the  dogs  do  not  fight  fairly,  a 
number  of  the  animals  bundling  together  and  attacking 
a  single  dog.  Dogs  selected  for  the  fight  are,  of  course, 
the  best  of  the  teams.  A  dog  which  maintains  his  fight- 
ing supremacy  becomes  a  king  dog,  and  when  beaten 
becomes  a  first  lieutenant  to  the  king. 

After  the  forced  enthusiasm  of  this  brief  period  of 
excitement,  the  Eskimos  begin  to  succumb  to  the  inevita- 
ble melancholia  of  nature,  when  the  sun,  the  source  of 


THE  CURTAIN  OF  NIGHT  DROPS  93 

natural  life,  disappears  and  darkness  descends.  A 
gloom  descends  heavily  upon  their  spirits.  A  subtle 
sadness  tinctures  their  life,  and  they  are  possessed  by  an 
impulse  to  weep.  At  this  season,  hour  by  hour,  the 
darkness  thickens;  the  cold  increases  and  chills  their 
igloos;  the  wind,  exultant  while  the  sun  shines,  now 
whines  and  sobs  dolorously — there  is  something  grue- 
some, uncanny,  supernatural,  in  its  siren  sorrow.  Out- 
side, the  snow  falls,  the  sea  closes.  Its  clamant  beat  of 
waves  is  silenced.  Sea  animals  mostly  disappear;  land 
animals  are  rare.  Their  source  of  physical  supply  van- 
ished, the  Eskimos  unconsciously  feel  the  grim  hand  of 
want,  of  starvation,  which  means  death,  upon  them.  The 
psychology  of  this  period  of  depression  partly  lies,  un- 
doubtedly, in  this  instinctive  dread  of  death  from  lack  of 
food  and  the  natural  depression  of  unrelieved  gloom. 
Moreover,  there  is  a  grief,  born  of  the  native  supersti- 
tion that,  when  the  sea  freezes,  the  souls  of  all  who  have 
perished  in  the  waters  are  imprisoned  during  the  long 
night.  Too  fierce  is  the  struggle  of  these  people  with 
the  elemental  forces  to  permit  them,  like  many  other 
aboriginal  peoples  to  be  obsessed  greatly  with  supersti- 
tions. Although  their  religion  is  a  very  primitive  and 
native  one,  it  is  usually  only  at  the  inception  of  night 
that  'they  feel  the  appalling  nearness  of  a  world 
that  is  supernatural.  As  the  last  rim  of  the  sun 
sank  over  the  southern  ice,  the  natives  entered  upon  a 
formal  period  of  melancholy,  during  which  the  bereave- 
ments of  each  family,  and  the  discomforts  and  disasters 
of  the  year,  were  memoralized. 

I  shall  never  forget  that  long,  sad  evening,  which 
lasted  many  normal  days.     The  sun  had  descended.     A 


94  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

sepulchral,  gray-green  curtain  of  gloom  hung  over  the 
chilled  earth.  In  the  dim  semi-darkness  could  be 
vaguely  seen  the  outlines  of  the  igloos,  of  the  heaving 
curvatures  of  snow-covered  land,  and  the  blacker,  snake- 
like  twistings  of  open  lanes  of  water,  where  the  sea  had 
not  yet  frozen.  Sitting  in  my  box-house,  I  was  startled 
suddenly  by  a  sound  that  made  my  flesh  for  the  instant 
creep.  I  walked  to  the  door  and  threw  it  open.  Over 
the  bluish,  snow-covered  land,  formed  by  the  indentures 
and  hollows,  stretched  dark-purplish  shapes — Titan 
shadows,  sepulchral  and  ominous,  some  with  shrouded 
heads,  others  with  spectral  arms  threateningly  upraised. 
Nebulous  and  gruesome  shreds  of  blue-fog  like  wraiths 
shifted  over  the  sea.  Out  of  the  sombre,  heavy  air  be- 
gan to  issue  a  sound  as  of  many  women  sobbing.  From 
the  indistinct  distance  came  moaning,  crooning  voices. 
Sometimes  hysterical  wails  of  anguish  rent  the  air,  and 
now  and  then  frantic  choruses  shrieked  some  heart- 
aching  despair.  My  impression  was  that  I  was  in  a 
land  of  the  sorrowful  dead,  some  mid-strata  of  the  spirit 
world,  where,  in  this  gray-green  twilight,  formless 
things  in  the  distance  moved  to  and  fro. 

There  is,  I  believe,  in  the  heart  of  every  man,  an 
instinctive  respect  for  sorrow.  With  muffled  steps,  I 
left  the  igloo  and  paced  the  dreariness  of  ice,  treading 
slowly,  lest,  in  the  darkness,  I  slip  into  some  unseen 
crevasse  of  the  open  sea.  A  strange  and  eerie  sight  con- 
fronted me.  Along  the  seashore,  bending  over  the  lap- 
ping black  water,  or  standing  here  and  there  by  inky, 
open  leads  in  the  severed  ice,  many  Eskimo  women  were 
gathered.  Some  stood  in  groups  of  two  or  three. 
Bowed  and  disconsolate,  her  arms  about  them,  with 


THE  CURTAIN  OF  NIGHT  DROPS  95 

almost  every  hundred  steps,  I  saw  a  weeping  mother  and 
her  children.  Standing  rigid  and  stark,  motionless 
graven  images  of  despair,  or  frantically  writhing  to  and 
fro,  others  stood  far  apart  in  desolate  places,  alone. 

The  dull,  opaque  air  was  tinged  with  a  strange  phos- 
phorescent green,  suggestive  of  a  place  of  dead  things; 
and  now,  like  the  flutterings  of  huge  death-lamps,  along 
the  horizon,  where  the  sun  had  sunk,  gashes  of  crimson 
here  and  there  fitfully  glowed  blood-red  in  the  pall-like 
sky. 

To  the  left,  as  I  walked  along,  I  recognized  Tung- 
wingwah,  with  a  child  on  her  back  and  a  bag  of  moss  in 
her  hand.  She  stood  behind  a  cheerless  rock,  with  her 
face  toward  the  faint  red  flushes  of  the  sun.  She  stood 
motionless.  Big  tears  rolled  from  her  eyes,  but  not  a 
sound  was  uttered.  To  my  low  queries  she  made  no 
response.  I  invited  her  to  the  camp  to  have  a  cup  of 
tea,  thinking  to  change  her  sad  thoughts  and  loosen  her 
tongue.  But  still  her  eyes  did  not  leave  that  last  distant 
line  of  open  water.  From  another,  I  later  learned  that 
in  the  previous  April  her  daughter  of  five,  while  playing 
on  the  ice-foot,  slipped  and  was  lost  in  the  sea.  The 
mother  now  mourned  because  the  ice  would  bury  her 
little  one's  soul. 

A  little  farther  along  was  Al-leek-ah,  a  woman  of 
middle  age,  with  two  young  children  by  her  side.  She 
was  hysterical  in  her  grief,  now  laughing  with  a  weird 
giggle,  now  crying  and  groaning  as  if  in  great  pain,  and 
again  dancing  with  emotions  of  madness.  I  learned  her 
story  from  a  chatter  that  ran  through  all  her  anguish. 
Towanah,  her  first  husband,  had  been  drawn  under  the 
ice,  by  the  harpoon  line,  twenty  years  ago.  And  though 


96  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

she  had  been  married  three  times  since,  she  was  trying 
to  keep  alive  the  memory  of  her  first  love.  I  went  on, 
marveling  at  a  primitive  fidelity  so  long  enduring. 

Still  farther  along  towards  the  steep  slopes  of  the 
main  coast,  I  saw  Ahwynet,  all  alone  in  the  gloomy 
shadow  of  great  cliffs.  Her  story  was  told  in  chants 
and  moans.  Her  husband  and  all  her  children  had  been 
swept  by  an  avalanche  into  the  stormy  seas.  There  was 
a  kind  of  wild  poetry  in  the  song  of  her  bereavement. 
Tears  came  to  my  eyes.  The  rush  of  the  avalanche,  the 
hiss  of  the  wind,  the  pounding  of  the  seas,  were  all  indi- 
cated. And  then,  in  heart-breaking  tones,  came  "blood 
of  her  blood,  flesh  of  her  flesh,  under  the  frozen  waters,' y 
and  other  sentiments  which  I  could  not  catch  in  the 
undertone  of  sobs. 

Cold  shivers  began  to  run  up  my  spine,  and  I 
turned  to  retreat  to  camp.  Here  was  a  scene  that  per- 
haps a  Dante  might  adequately  write  about.  I  cannot. 
I  felt  that  I,  an  alien,  was  intruding  into  the  realm  of 
some  strange  and  mystic  sorrow.  I  felt  the  sombre  thrill 
of  a  borderland  world  not  human.  These  women  were 
communicating  with  the  souls  of  their  dead.  To  those 
who  had  perished  in  the  sea  they  were  telling,  ere  the 
gates  of  ice  closed  above  them,  all  the  news  of  the  past 
year — things  of  interest  and  personal,  and  even  of  years 
before,  as  far  back  as  they  could  remember.  Almost 
every  family  each  year  loses  someone  in  the  sea; 
almost  every  family  was  represented  by  these  weeping 
women,  overburdened  with  their  own  naive  sorrow,  and 
who  yet  strangely  sought  to  cheer  the  souls  of  the  dis- 
consolate and  desolate  dead. 

Meanwhile,  while  the  women  were  weeping  and  giv- 


THE  CURTAIN  OF  NIGHT  DROPS  97 

ing  their  parting  messages  to  the  dead,  the  male  mem- 
bers of  the  tribe,  in  chants  and  dramatic  dances,  were 
celebrating,  in  the  igloos,  the  important  events  of  the 
past  year. 

Inside,  the  igloos  were  dimly  lighted  with  stone 
blubber  lamps.  These,  during  the  entire  winter,  furnish 
light  and  heat.  The  lamp  consists  of  a  crescent-shaped 
stone  with  a  concavity,  in  which  there  is  animal  oil  and  a 
line  of  crushed  moss  as  a  wick.  Lighted  early  in  the  sea- 
son, for  an  entire  winter,  these  lamps  cast  a  faint,  per- 
petual, flickering  light.  Shadows  dance  grotesquely 
about  on  the  rounded  walls.  An  oily  stench  pervades  the 
unventilated  enclosure.  In  this  weird,  yellow-blackish 
radiance  the  men  engage  in  their  fantastic  dances.  Mov- 
ing the  central  parts  of  their  bodies  to  and  fro,  they  utter 
weird  sing-song  chants.  They  recite,  in  jerky,  curious 
singing,  the  history  of  the  big  events  of  the  year ;  of  suc- 
cessful chases;  of  notable  storms;  of  everything  that 
means  much  in  their  simple  lives.  As  they  dance,  their 
voices  rise  to  a  high  pitch  of  excitement.  Their  eyes 
flash  like  smoldering  coals.  Their  arms  move  frantic- 
ally. Some  begin  to  sob  uncontrollably.  A  hysteria  of 
laughter  seizes  others.  Finally  the  dance  ends;  ex- 
hausted, they  pass  into  a  brief  lethargy,  from  which  they 
revive,  their  melancholia  departed.  The  women  return 
from  the  shores  of  the  sea;  they  wipe  their  tears,  and, 
with  native  spontaneity,  forget  their  depression  and 
smile  again. 

While  I  was  interested  in  the  curious  spectacles  pre- 
sented, the  sunset  of  1907  to  me  was  inspiration  for  the 
final  work  in  directing  the  completion  of  the  outfit  with 
which  to  begin  the  conquest  of  the  Pole  at  sunrise  of 


98  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

1908.  Fortunately,  I  was  not  handicapped  by  the  com- 
pany of  the  usual  novices  taken  on  Polar  expeditions. 
There  were  only  two  of  us  white  men,  and  white  men,  at 
the  best,  must  be  regarded  as  amateurs  compared  with 
the  expert  efficiency  of  Eskimos  in  their  own  environ- 
ment. Our  food  supply  contained  only  the  prime  fac- 
tors of  primitive  nourishment.  Special  foods  and  lab- 
oratory concoctions  and  canned  delicacies  did  not  fill  an 
important  space  in  our  larder.  NOT  had  we  balloons, 
automobiles,  motor  sleds  or  other  freak  devices.  We 
did,  however,  I  have  said,  have  what  was  of  utmost  im- 
portance, an  abundance  of  the  best  hickory  and  metal 
for  the  making  of  the  sleds  upon  which  our  destinies 
were  vitally  to  depend. 


FIRST  WEEK  OF  THE  LONG  NIGHT 

HUNTING   IN   THE   ARCTIC    TWILIGHT — PURSUING   BEAR, 
CARIBOU  AND  SMALLER  GAME  IN  SEMI-GLOOM 

VII 

THE  GLORY  or  THE  AURORA 

The  sun  had  dropped  below  the  horizon.  The 
gloom  continued  steadily  to  thicken.  Each  twenty- 
four  hours,  at  the  approximate  approach  of  what  was 
the  noon  hour  when  the  sun  had  been  above  the  horizon, 
the  sky  to  the  south  of  us  glowed  with  marvelous,  Sub- 
dued sunset  hues.  By  this  time  our  work  had  gone 
ahead  by  progressive  stages.  Furs,  to  protect  us  from 
the  cold  of  the  uttermost  North  on  my  prospective  trip, 
had  been  prepared  and  were  being  made  into  clothing; 
meat  and  fat,  for  food  and  fuel,  were  being  dried  and 
stored  in  numerous  caches  about  Annoatok;  several  of 
the  sledges  and  part  of  the  equipment  were  ready. 

We  still  had  need  of  large  quantities  of  supplies, 
and,  while  some  of  the  natives  were  busy  with  their 
routine  work,  we  planned  that  as  many  others  as  pos- 
'sible  should  use  the  twilight  days  pursuing  bear,  cari- 
bou, fox,  hare  and  other  game  far  beyond  the  usual 
Eskimo  haunts.  Before  the  dawn  of  the  sun's  after- 
glow, on  the  morning  of  October  26,  seven  sledges  with 


100  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

sixty  dogs  were  on  the  ice-foot  near  our  camp,  ready  to 
start  for  hunting  grounds  near  Humboldt  Glacier,  a 
distance  of  one  hundred  miles  northward.* 

While  the  teamsters  waited  for  the  final  password 
the  dogs  chafed  fiercely.  I  could  barely  see  the  outlines 
of  my  companions  in  the  gloom,  and  it  was  difficult,  in 
the  irregular  snow  and  tide-lifted  ice  descending  to  sea 
level,  to  find  footing. 

The  word  to  start  was  given.  My  companions  took 
up  the  cry. 

"Huk!  Huk!  Huk!"  (Go!  Go!)  they  shouted. 

The  dogs  responded  in  leaps  and  howls. 

"Howah!  Howahr  (Right!  Right!)  "Eghl 
Eghr  (Stop!  Stop!)  "Aureti!"  (Behave!)  cameecho- 
ingly  along  the  line  of  teams.  Finally  the  wild  dash 
slackened,  the  dogs  regulated  their  paces  to  an  easy  trot, 
and  we  swept  steadily  along  the  frozen  highway  of  the 
tide-made  shelf  of  the  ice-foot.  The  sledges  dodged 
stones  and  ice-blocks,  edged  along  dangerous  precipices, 
in  the  depths  of  which  I  heard  the  swish  of  water,  and 
glided  miraculously  over  crevices  and  along  deep  gorges. 
Jumping  about  the  sledges,  guiding,  pushing,  or  retard- 
ing their  speed,  cracking  their  whips  in  the  air,  the 
natives,  with  that  art  which  only  aborigines  seem  to 
have,  picked  the  way  and  controlled  the  dogs,  but  a  few 
generations  removed  from  their  wolf  progenitors,  with 
amazing  dexterity. 

A  low  wind  blew  down  the  slopes  and  froze  our 


*Game  List.— The  following  animals  were  captured  from  August  15, 
1907,  to  May  15,  1909: 

Two  thousand  four  hundred  and  twenty-two  birds,  311  Arctic  hares, 
320  blue  and  white  foxes,  32  Greenland  reindeer,  4  white  reindeer,  22  polar 
bears,  52  seals,  73  walrus,  21  narwhals,  3  white  whales,  and  206  musk  oxen. 


FIRST  WEEK  OF  THE  LONG  NIGHT  101 

breath  in  lines  of  frost  about  our  heads.  The  tempera- 
ture was  35°  below  zero.  To  the  left  of  us  was  Kane 
Basin,  recalling  its  history  of  human  strife  northward. 
It  was  filled  with  serried  ranges  of  crushed  ice,  a  berg 
here  and  there,  all  in  the  light  of  the  kindling  sky,  aglow 
with  purple  and  blue.  To  the  far  west  I  saw  the 
dim  outline  of  Ellesmere,  my  promised  land,  over  which 
I  hoped  to  force  a  new  route  to  the  Pole ;  upon  its  snowy 
highlands  was  poured  a  soft  creamy  light  from  encour- 
aging skies.  To  the  right  was  the  rugged  coast  of  Green- 
land, its  huge,  ice-chiselled  cliffs  leaping  portentously 
forward  in  the  gloom.  Thrilling  with  the  race,  we  made 
a  run  of  twenty  miles  and  reached  Rensselaer  Harbor, 
where  Dr.  Kane  had  spent  his  long  nights  of  misfortune. 
We  pitched  camp  at  the  ice-foot  at  the  head  of  the 
bay.  Although  we  found  traces  of  hare  and  fox,  it  was 
too  dark  to  venture  on  the  chase.  The  temperature  had 
fallen  to  — 40°,  the  wind  pierced  with  a  sharp  sting.  For 
my  shelter  I  erected  a  new  tent  which  I  had  invented, 
and  the  efficiency  of  which  I  desired  to  test.  Taking  the 
sledge  frame  work  as  a  platform,  a  folding  top  of  strong 
canvas  was  fastened,  and  spread  between  two  bars  of 
hickory  from  each  end.  The  entrance  was  in  front. 
Inside  was  a  space  eight  feet  long  and  three  and  one- 
half  feet  wide,  with  a  round  whaleback  top.  Inside  this 
a  supplementary  wall  was  constructed  of  light  blankets, 
offering  an  air  space  of  an  inch  between  the  outer  wall 
as  a  non-conductor  to  confine  the  little  heat  generated 
within.  As  there  was  ample  room  for  only  two  persons, 
Koo-loo-ting-wah,  my  leading  man,  was  invited  to  share 
the  tent.  The  natives  had  not  provided  themselves  with 
shelter  of  any  kind.  They  had  counted  qn  either  build- 


lufc  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

ing  an  igloo  or  seeking  the  shelter  of  the  snows,  as  do  the 
creatures  of  the  wilds. 

Inside  my  tent  I  prepared  a  meal  on  the  little 
German  stove,  burning  the  vapor  of  alcohol.  The  meal 
consisted  of  a  pail  of  hot  corn  meal,  fried  bacon  and  a 
liberal  all-round  supply  of  steaming  tea.  To  accomplish 
this,  which  included  melting  the  snow,  heating  the  water, 
and  cooking  everything  separately,  required  about  two 
hours.  As  I  considered  eating  outside  with  any  degree 
of  comfort  impossible,  my  companions  were  invited  to 
crowd  inside  the  tent.  The  vapor  of  their  breath  and 
that  of  the  cooking  soon  condensed  into  snow,  and  a 
miniature  snowstorm  covered  everything  within.  After 
this  was  swept  out,  the  Eskimos  were  invited  to  enter 
again.  All  partook  of  the  meal  ravenously,  and  then 
emerged  to  reconnoiter  the  surroundings.  Tracks  of 
ptarmigan,  hare  and  foxes  were  found,  and  as  we  moved 
about  with  seeking,  owl  eyes,  ravens  shouted  notes  of 
welcome. 

We  then  retired  to  rest.  As  there*  was  no  snow 
about  that  was  sufficiently  hard  to  cut  blocks  with  which 
to  erect  snow  houses,  the  natives  placed  themselves  in 
semi-reclining  positions  on  their  sledges  and  slept  in  their 
traveling  clothes.  After  a  few  hours  they  awoke  and 
partook  of  chopped  frozen  meat  and  blubber ;  two  hours 
later,  they  made  a  fire  in  a  tin  can,  with  moss  and  blubber 
as  fuel,  and  over  this  prepared  a  pot  of  parboiled  meat. 
A  crescent-shaped  wall  of  snow  was  built  to  break  the 
wind;  in  the  shelter  of  this  they  sat,  grinning  delightedly, 
and  eating  savagely,  with  much  smacking  of  the  lips,  the 
steaming  broth  and  walrus  meat.  All  this  I  studied  with 
intense  interest.  I  desired  on  this  trip  not  only  to  test 


FIRST  WEEK  OF  THE  LONG  NIGHT  103 

iny  tent,  but  to  learn  more  of  the  native  arts  of  the 
Eskimo,  knowing  that  I,  on  my  Polar  trip,  must,  if  I 
would  be  successful,  adapt  myself  to  just  such  methods 
of  living. 

This  was  my  first  winter  experience  of  camping  out 
in  the  night  season  for  this  year,  and,  with  only  a  diet  of 
meal  and  bacon,  I  was  miserably  cold.  I  was  now  test- 
ing also  for  the  first  time  the  new  winter  clothing  with 
which  I  and  all  my  companions  were  dressed.  Our 
shirts  were  made  of  bird  skins.  Over  these  were  coats 
of  blue  fox  or  caribou  skins;  our  trousers  were  of  bear, 
our  boots  of  seal,  and  our  stockings  of  hare  skins.  This 
was  the  usual  native  winter  costume,  but  under  it  I  had 
added  a  suit  of  underwear. 

Retiring  again  for  rest,  I  left  instructions  to  be 
called  for  an  early  start.  It  seemed  that  I  had  hardly 
settled  comfortably  in  my  sleeping  bag  when  the  call  for 
action  came. 

We  hastily  partook  of  tea  and  biscuits,  harnessed 
our  teams  and  started  through  the  dark.  The  Eskimos^ 
having  eaten  their  fill  of  fat  and  frozen  meat,  to  which  I 
must  yet  accustom  myself,  were  thoroughly  comfortable. 
I  was  miserably  cold. 

By  running  behind  my  sledge  I  produced  sufficient 
bodily  heat  after  awhile  to  feel  comfortable.  My  face 
suffered  severely  from  the  cutting  slant  of  the  winds. 
We  passed  the  perpendicular  walls  of  Cape  Seiper  at 
dawn.  We  ran  along  the  long,  straight  coast  into  Ban- 
croft Bay  during  the  six  hours  of  twilight.  The  journey 
was  continued  to  Dallas  Bay  by  a  forced  march  of  fifty 
miles  before  we  halted. 

The  scene  displayed  the  rare   glory  of   twilight 


104  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

charms  as  it  had  the  day  before,  but  the  snow  was 
deeper,  the  temperature  lower.  The  wind  steadily  in- 
creased and  veered  northward.  We  made  several  efforts 
to  cross  the  bay  ice,  but  cracked  ice,  huge  uplifted  blocks 
and  deep  snows  compelled  a  retreat  to  the  ice-foot. 

The  ice-foot  along  Smith  Sound  is  a  superb  high- 
way, where  otherwise  sledge  travel  would  be  quite  im- 
possible along  the  coast. 

Along  Dallas  Bay  we  found  a  great  deal  of  grass- 
covered  land  in  undulating  valleys  and  on  low  hills, 
which  offered  grazing  for  caribou  and  hare.  The  pre- 
ceding glimmer  of  the  new  moon,  which  was  to  rise  a 
few  days  hence,  offered  sufficient  light  to  search  for 
game. 

We  now  fed  our  dogs  for  the  first  time  since  leaving 
Annoatok.  After  a  liberal  drink  of  snow  water,  we 
started  to  seek  our  luck  in  the  chase.  In  the  course  of 
an  hour  my  companions  returned  with  four  hares  which, 
when  dressed,  weighed  about  forty-eight  pounds.  Two 
of  these  were  cached.  The  others  were  eaten  later. 

Before  dawn  of  the  day-long  twilight  the  wind 
increased  to  a  full  gale.  The  sky  to  the  north,  smoky 
all  night,  now  blackened  as  with  soot.  The  wind  came 
with  a  howl  that  brought  to  mind  the  despairing  cries  of 
the  dying  explorers  whose  bleached  bones  were  strewn 
along  the  shore.  The  gloomy  outline  of  the  coast  re- 
mained visible  for  awhile;  but  soon  the  air  thickened 
and  came  weighted  with  snow  that  piled  up  in  huge 
drifts. 

The  Eskimos  took  a  few  of  their  favorite  dogs  and 
sought  shelter  to  the  lee  of  the  tent,  where  drift  covered 
their  blankets  with  snow.  Breathing  holes  were  kept 


FIRST  WEEK  OF  THE  LONG  NIGHT  105 

open  over  their  faces.  Buried  in  snow  drifts,  they  were 
imprisoned  for  twenty-eight  hours.  But  this  tent  sled 
sheltered  Koo-loo-ting-wah  and  myself.  When  the  rush 
of  the  storm  had  abated  we  began  digging  our  way  out. 
In  this  effort  we  dug  up  men  and  dogs  like  potatoes 
from  a  patch.  The  northern  sky  had  paled,  the  south 
was  brightening.  The  pack  was  lined  with  long  lines 
beyond  each  hummock;  the  snow  was  covered  with  a 
strong  crust.  But  the  ice-foot  was  a  hopeless  line  of 
drifts  which  made  travel  over  it  quite  impossible. 

The  work  of  pounding  snow  from  the  dogs  and 
freeing  the  sledges  brought  to  our  faces  beads  of  perspi- 
ration which  rolled  off  and  froze  in  lines  of  ice  on  our 
furs.  We  were  none  the  worse  as  a  result  of  the  storm, 
and  although  hungry  as  wolves,  time  was  too  precious  to 
stop  for  a  full  meal. 

We  now  pushed  out  of  the  bay,  on  to  the  sea  ice. 
At  this  point  the  dogs  scented  a  bear  and  soon  crossed 
its  track.  Rested  and  hungry,  they  were  in  condition 
for  a  desperate  chase.  Their  sharp  noses  pointed  keenly 
into  the  huge  bear  foot-prints,  their  little  ears  quivered^ 
while,  with  howls,  they  started  onward  in  a  mad  rush. 

Neither  our  voices  nor  the  whips  made  an  impres- 
sion on  their  wild  speed.  We  crossed  banks  and  ridges 
of  snow  and  swirled  about  slopes  of  ice,  gripping 
sledges  violently.  Now  we  were  thrown  to  one  side, 
again  to  the  other,  dragging  resistlessly  beside  the  sleds. 
Rising,  we  gripped  the  rear  upstanders  with  fierce 
determination. 

Just  how  we  escaped  broken  limbs,  and  our  sledges 
utter  destruction,  is  a  mystery  to  me.  After  a  run  of  an 
hour  we  sighted  the  bear.  The  animal  had  evidently 


106  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

sighted  us,  for  he  was  galloping  for  the  open  water 
toward  the  northwest.  We  cut  the  fleetest  dogs  loose 
from  each  team.  Freed,  they  rushed  over  the  snow  like 
race-horses.  But  the  bear  had  an  advantage.  As 
the  first  dog  nipped  his  haunches  he  plunged  into  the 
black  waters.  We  advanced  and  waited  for  him  to  rise. 
But  this  bruin  had  sense  enough  to  emerge  on  the  op- 
posite shore,  where  he  shook  off  the  freezing  waters 
vigorously,  and  then  sat  down  as  if  to  have  a 
laugh  at  us. 

I  knew  that  to  plunge  into  the  waters  would  have 
been  fatal  to  dog  or  man  and  equally  fatal  to  a  boat,  as 
ice,  in  the  intense  cold,  would  form  about  it  so  rapidly 
that  it  could  not  be  propelled. 

The  dogs  sat  down  and  howled  a  chorus  of  sad  dis- 
appointment. For  miles  about,  the  men  sought  fruit- 
lessly for  a  way  to  cross.  .Outwitted,  we  returned  to 
continue  our  journey  Northward. 

Advance  Bay  and  its  islands  were  in  sight.  Among 
these,  we  aimed  to  place  our  central  camp.  The  light 
was  fading  fast,  and  a  cold  wind  came  from  Humboldt 
Glacier,  which  at  this  time  was  located  by  a  slight  dark- 
ening of  the  sky.  Many  grounded  icebergs  were  about, 
and  the  sea  ice  was  much  crossed.  The  hummocks  and 
the  snow  were  not  as  troublesome  as  farther  south. 

Two  ravens  followed  us,  their  shrill  cries  echoing 
from  berg  to  berg.  The  Eskimos  inferred  from  their 
presence  that  bears  were  near,  but  we  saw  no  tracks. 

The  cries  of  the  ravens  were  nearly  as  provoking 
to  the  dogs  as  the  bear  tracks,  and  we  moved  along 
rapidly  to  Brook's  Island.  This  was  rather  high,  with  a 
plateau  and  sharp  cliffs.  Bonsall  Island  near  by  was 


FIRST  WEEK  OF  THE  LONG  NIGHT  107 

rounded  by  glacial  action.  Between  them  we  found  a 
place  to  camp  somewhat  sheltered  from  the  wind. 

While  eating  our  ration  of  corn  meal  and  bacon, 
howls  of  the  dogs  rose  to  a  fierce  crescendo.  I  supposed 
they  were  saluting  the  coming  of  the  moon,  as  is  their 
custom,  but  the  howls  changed  to  tones  of  increasing 
excitement.  We  went  out  to  inquire,  but  saw  nothing. 
It  was  so  dark  that  I  could  not  see  the  dogs  twenty  feet 
away,  and  the  cold  wind  made  breathing  difficult. 

"Nan  nook"  (Bear) ,  the  Eskimos  said  in  an  under- 
tone. I  looked  around  for  some  position  of  defense. 
But  the  dense  night-blackness  rendered  this  hopeless,  so 
we  took  our  position  behind  the  tent,  rifles  in  hand.  The 
bear,  of  an  inquisitive  turn  of  mind,  deliberately  ad- 
vanced upon  us.  "Taokoo!  taokoo!  igloo  dia  oo-ah- 
toniel"  (Look!  look!  beyond  the  iceberg!)  said  the 
Eskimos.  Neither  the  iceberg  nor  the  bear  was  visible. 
After  a  cold  and  exciting  wait,  the  bear  turned  and  hid 
behind  another  iceberg.  We  separated  a  few  of  the 
best  bear  d®gs  from  each  other.  Bounding  off,  they 
disappeared  quietly  in  the  darkness.  The  other  dogs 
were  fastened  to  the  sledges,  and  away  we  started. 

I  sat  on  To-ti-o's  sledge,  as  he  had  the  largest  team. 
We  jumped  crevasses,  and  occasionally  dipped  in  open 
water. 

The  track  of  the  bear  wound  about  huge  bergs 
which  looked  in  the  darkness  like  nebulous  shadows. 
The  dogs,  of  themselves,  followed  the  invisible  line  of 
tracks. 

Soon  the  wolfish  dogs  ahead  began  to  shout  the 
chorus  of  their  battle.  We  left  the  track  in  an  air-line 
course  for  the  dark  mystery  out  of  which  the  noise  came. 


108  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

To-ti-o  took  the  lead.  As  we  neared  the  noise,  all  but 
two  dogs  of  his  sledge  were  cut  loose.  The  sledge  over- 
turned, I  under  it.  As  Koo-loo-ting-wah  came  along, 
he  freed  all  his  dogs.  I  passed  him  my  new  take-down 
Winchester. 

Hurrying  after  To-ti-o,  he  had  advanced  only  a  few 
steps  when  To-ti-o  fired.  Koo-loo-ting-wah,  noting  an 
effort  of  the  bear  to  rise,  fired  the  new  rifle. 

A  flash  of  fire  lit  the  darkness.  Koo-loo-ting-wah 
rushed  to  me,  asking  for  the  folding  lantern.  The 
smokeless  powder  had  broken  the  new  gun.  To-ti-o  had 
no  more  cartridges.  The  bear,  however,  was  quiet.  We 
advanced,  lances  in  hand. 

The  dogs  danced  wildly  about  the  bear,  but  he 
managed  to  throw  out  his  feet  with  sufficient  force  to 
keep  the  canine  fangs  disengaged.  The  other  Eskimos 
now  came,  with  rushing  dogs  in  advance.  To-ti-o  dashed 
forward  and  delivered  the  lance  under  the  bear's 
shoulder.  The  bear  was  his.  He  thereby  not  only 
gained  the  prize  for  the  expedition,  but,  by  the  addition 
of  the  bear  to  his  game  list,  completed  his  retinue  of  ac- 
complishments whereby  he  could  claim  the  full  privileges 
of  manhood. 

Among  other  things,  it  gave  him  the  right  to  marry. 
He  had  already  secured  a  bride  of  twelve,  but,  without 
this  bear  conquest,  the  match  would  not  have  been  per- 
manent. He  danced  with  the  romantic  joy  of  a  young 
lover.  We  drove  the  dogs  off  from  the  victim  with 
lashes,  and  fell  to  and  skinned  and  dressed  the  carcass. 
A  taste  was  given  to  each  dog.  The  balance  was  placed 
on  the  sledges.  Soon  we  were  to  camp,  waiting  for  the 
sled  loads  of  bear  meat. 


THE  HELPERS— NORTHERNMOST  MAN  AND  HIS  WIFE 


A    MECCA    OF    MUSK    OX    ALONG    EUREKA    SOUND 

A    NATIVE    HELPER 
AH-WE-LAirS    PROSPECTIVE    WIFE 


FIRST  WEEK  OF  THE  LONG  NIGHT  109 

On  the  day  following  we  started  to  hunt  caribou. 
The  sky  was  beautifully  clear ;  the  glacial  wind  was  lost 
as  we  left  the  ice.  The  party  scattered  among  numerous 
old  bergs  of  the  glacier.  Koo-loo-ting-wah  accom- 
panied me.  We  aimed  to  rise  to  a  small  tableland  from 
which  I  might  make  a  study  of  the  surroundings. 

We  had  not  gone  inland  more  than  a  mile  when  we 
saw  numerous  fresh  caribou  tracks.  Following  these, 
we  moved  along  a  steep  slope  to  the  tableland  above  at 
an  altitude  of  about  one  thousand  feet.  We  peeped 
over  the  crest.  Below  us  were  two  reindeer  digging 
under  the  snow  for  food.  The  light  was  good,  and  they 
were  in  gun  range.  An  Eskimo,  however,  gets  very  near 
his  game  before  he  chances  a  shot,  so,  winding  about 
under  the  crest  of  a  cliff  or  a  snow-covered  shelf  of  rocks, 
we  got  to  their  range  and  fired. 

The  creatures  fell.  They  were  nearly  white,  young, 
and  possessed  long  fur  and  thick  skins,  which  we  needed 
badly  for  sleeping  bags.  With  pocket  knives,  the 
natives  skinned  the  animals  and  divided  the  meat  in  three 
packs  while  I  examined  the  surroundings. 

Part  of  the  face  of  Humboldt  Glacier,  which  ex- 
tends sixty  miles  north,  was  clearly  visible  in  cliffs 
of  a  dark  blue  color.  The  interior  ice  ran  in  waves  like 
the  surface  of  stormy  seas,  perfectly  free  of  snow,  with 
many  crevasses.  An  odd  purplish-blue  light  upon  it  was 
reflected  to  the  skies,  resembling  to  some  extent  a  water 
sky.  The  snow  of  the  sea  ice  below  was  of  a  delicate 
lilac.  Otherwise,  sky  and  land  were  flooded  with  the 
usual  dominant  purple  of  the  Arctic  twilight. 

This  glacier,  the  largest  in  Arctic  America,  had  at 
one  time  extended  very  much  farther  south.  All  the 


110  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

islands,  including  Brook's,  had  at  one  time  been  under 
its  grinding  influence.  As  a  picture  it  was  a  charming 
study  in  purple  and  blue,  but  the  temperature  was  too 
low  and  the  light  too  nearly  spent  to  venture  a  further 
investigation. 

The  Eskimos  fixed  for  me  an  extremely  light  pack. 
This  was  comfortably  placed  on  my  back,  with  a  bundle 
of  thongs  over  the  forehead.  The  natives  took  their 
huge  bundles,  and,  together,  we  started  for  camp.  At 
every  rest  we  cut  off  slices  of  caribou  tallow.  I  was  sur- 
prised to  find  that  I  had  acquired  a  taste  for  a  new 
delicacy.  At  camp  we  found  the  natives,  all  in  good 
humor,  awaiting  us  beside  heaps  of  meat  and  skins.  All 
had  been  successful  in  securing  from  one  to  two  animals 
each  in  regions  nearer  by.  In  a  further  search  they 
had  failed  to  find  promising  tracks,  so  we  proposed  to 
return  on  the  morrow,  hoping  to  meet  bears  en  route. 

With  the  stupor  of  the  gluttony  of  reindeer  meat 
and  the  fatigue  of  the  long  chase,  we  slept  late.  Awak- 
ing, we  partook  each  of  a  cup  of  tea,  and  packed  and 
loaded  the  meat.  Drawing  heavy  loads,  the  dogs  gladly 
leaped  forward.  The  twilight  flush  already  suffused 
the  sky  with  incandescence.  Against  the  southeastern 
sky,  glowing  with  rose,  the  great  glaciers  of  Humboldt 
loomed  in  walls  of  violet,  while  the  sea  displayed  many 
shades  of  rose  and  lilac,  according  to  the  direction  of  the 
light  on  the  slope  of  the  drifts. 

Knowing  that  their  noses  pointed  to  a  land  of  wal- 
rus, the  dogs  kept  up  a  lively  pace.  Not  a  breath  of 
air  was  stirring.  The  temperature  was  — 42°.  Aiming 
to  make  Annoatok  in  two  marches,  we  ran  behind  the 
sledges  to  save  dog  energy  as  much  as  possible.  The 


FIRST  WEEK  OF  THE  LONG  NIGHT  111 

cold  enforced  vigorous  exercise.  But,  weighted  down 
by  furs,  the  comfort  of  the  sledges  was  often  sought 
to  escape  the  tortures  of  perspiration.  The  source  of 
light  slowly  shifted  along  shadowed  mountains  under 
the  frozen  sea.  Our  path  glowed  with  electric,  multi- 
colored splendor. 

By  degrees,  the  rose-colored  sky  assumed  the  hue  of 
old  gold,  the  violet  embroideries  of  clouds  changed  to 
purple.  The  gold,  in  running  bands,  darkened;  the 
purple  thickened.  Soon  new  celestial  torches  lighted 
the  changing  sheen  of  the  snows.  Into  the  dome  of 
heaven  swam  stars  of  burning  intensity,  each  of  which 
rivalled  the  sun  in  a  miniature  way.  In  this  new  illumi- 
nation the  twilight  fires  lost  flame  and  color.  Cold 
white  incandescence  electrically  suffused  the  frigid  sky. 

I  strode  onward,  in  that  white,  blazing  air,  the  joy 
and  beauty  of  it  enthralling  my  soul.  I  felt  as  though 
I  were  walking  in  a  world  of  heatless  fire,  a  half  super- 
natural realm  such  as  that  wherein  reigned  the  gods  of 
ancient  peoples.  I  felt  as  an  old  Norseman  must  have 
felt  when  the  glory  of  Valhalla  burst  upon  him.  For  a 
long  time  I  was  unconscious  of  the  fatigue  which  was 
growing  upon  me.  Finally,  overcome  by.  the  long 
forced  march,  I  sank  on  my  sled.  The  Eskimos,  chant- 
ing songs,  loomed  ahead,  their  forms  magnified  in  the 
unearthly  light.  Slowly  a  subtle  change  appeared  along 
the  horizon.  Silent  and  impressed,  I  watched  the  chang- 
ing scenes  and  evolving  lights  as  if  all  were  some  divine 
and  awe-inspiring  stage  arranged  by  God  for  some 
heroic  drama  of  man. 

New  and  warm  with  shimmering  veils  of  color,  at- 
tended by  four  radiant  satellites,  the  golden  face  of  the 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

moon  rose  majestically  over  the  sparkling  pinnacles  of 
the  Greenland  glaciers.  Below,  the  lovely  planet- 
deflected  images  formed  rainbow  curves  like  rubied  neck- 
laces about  her  invisible  neck.  As  the  moon  ascended 
in  a  spiral  course  the  rose  hues  paled,  the  white  light 
from  the  stars  softened  to  a  rich,  creamy  glow. 

We  continued  our  course,  the  Eskimos  singing,  the 
dogs  occasionally  barking.  Hours  passed.  Then  we 
all  suddenly  became  silent.  The  last,  the  supreme, 
glory  of  the  North  flamed  over  earth  and  frozen  sea. 
The  divine  fingers  of  the  aurora,*  that  unseen  and  in- 
tangible thing  of  flame,  who  comes  from  her  mysteri- 
ous throne  to  smile  upon  a  benighted  world,  began  to 
touch  the  sky  with  glittering,  quivering  lines  of  glowing 
silver.  With  skeins  of  running,  liquid  fire  she  wove 
over  the  sky  a  shimmering  panorama  of  blazing  beauty. 
Forms  of  fire,  indistinct  and  unhuman,  took  shape  and 
vanished.  From  horizon  to  zenith,  cascades  of  milk- 
colored  fire  ascended  and  fell,  as  must  the  magical  foun- 
tains of  heaven. 

In  the  glory  of  this  other-world  light  I  felt  the  in- 


*Auroras  in  the  Arctic  are  best  seen  in  more  southern  latitudes.  The 
display  here  described  was  the  brightest  observed  on  this  trip.  Not  more 
than  three  or  four  others  were  noted  during  the  following  year,  but  in 
previous  trips  I  have  witnessed  some  very  wonderful  color  and  motion 
displays. 

The  best  illustrations  of  this  remarkable  color  of  aurora  and  night 
come  from  the  brush  of  Mr.  Frank  Wilbert  Stokes.  These  were  repro- 
duced in  the  Century  Magazine  of  February,  1903.  After  their  appear- 
ance, Mr.  Peary  accorded  to  Mr.  Stokes  (a  member  of  his  expedition)  the 
same  sort  of  treatment  as  he  had  accorded  Astrup — the  same  as  that 
shown  to  others.  In  a  letter  to  the  late  Richard  Watson  Gilder,  editor  of 
the  Century,  he  denounced  and  did  his  utmost  to  discredit  Mr.  Stokes  by 
insisting  that  no  such  remarkable  colors  are  displayed  by  the  aurora 
borealis.  Mr.  Gilder  replied,  in  defense  of  Mr.  Stokes,  by  'quoting  from 
Peary's  own  book,  "Northward,"  Vol.  II,  pages  194,  195,  198  and  199, 
descriptions  of  even  more  remarkable  color  effects. 


FIRST  WEEK  OF  THE  LONG  NIGHT 


113 


significance  of  self,  a  human  unit;  and,  withal  I  be- 
came more  intensely  conscious  than  ever  of  the  transfig- 
uring influence  of  the  sublime  ideal  to  which  I  had  set 
myself.  I  exulted  in  the  thrill  of  an  indomitable  deter- 
mination, that  determination  of  human  beings  to  essay 
great  things — that  human  purpose  which,  throughout 
history,  has  resulted  in  the  great  deeds,  the  great  art,  of 
the  world,  and  which  lifts  men  above  themselves.  Spir- 
itually intoxicated,  I  rode  onward.  The  aurora  faded. 
But  its  glow  remained  in  my  soul. 

We  arrived  at  camp  late  on  November  1. 


THE  MOONLIGHT  QUEST  OF  THE 
WALRUS 

DESPERATE     AND     DANGEROUS     HUNTING,     IN     ORDER     TO 
SECURE  ADEQUATE  SUPPLIES  FOR  THE  POLAR  DASH— 
A  THRILLING  AND  ADVENTUROUS  RACE  IS  MADE  OVER 
FROZEN  SEAS  AND  ICY  MOUNTAINS  TO  THE  WALRUS 

GROUNDS TERRIFIC     EXPLOSION     OF     THE     ICE     ON 

WHICH  THE   PARTY   HUNTS SUCCESS   IN   SECURING 

OVER    SEVEN    SLED-LOADS    OF    BLUBBER    MAKES    THE 
POLE  SEEM  NEARER — AN  ARCTIC  TRAGEDY 

VIII 

FIVE  HUNDRED  MILES  THROUGH  NIGHT  AND  STORM 

The  early  days  of  November  were  devoted  to  rou- 
tine work  about  Annoatok.  Meat  was  gathered  and 
dried  in  strips  by  Francke ;  a  full  force  of  men  were  put 
to  the  work  of  devising  equipment;  the  women  were 
making  clothing  and  dressing  skins ;  and  then  a  traveling- 
party  was  organized  to  go  south  to  gather  an  additional 
harvest  of  meat  and  skins  and  furs.  For  this  purpose 
we  planned  to  take  advantage  of  the  November  moon. 
Thus,  in  the  first  week  of  the  month,  we  were  ready  for 
a  five-hundred-mile  run  to  the  southern  villages  and  to 
the  night-hunting  grounds  for  walrus. 

A  crack  of  whips  explosively  cut  the  taut,  cold  air. 
The  raucous,  weird  and  hungry  howl  of  the  wolf-dogs 


THE  MOONLIGHT  QUEST  OF  THE  WALRUS  115 

replied:  "Ah-u~oo,  Ah-u-oo,  Ah-u-oo!"  rolled  over 
the  ice;  "Huk-huk!"  the  Eskimos  shouted.  There  was  a 
sudden  tightening  of  the  traces  of  our  seven  sledges; 
fifty  lithe,  strong  bodies  leaped  forward;  and,  holding 
the  upstanders,  the  rear  upright  framework  of  the  native 
sledges,  I  and  my  six  companions  were  off.  In  a  few 
moments  the  igloos  of  the  village,  with  lights  shining 
through  windows  where  animal  membranes  served  as 
glass,  had  sped  by  us.  The  cheering  of  the  natives  be- 
hind was  soon  lost  in  the  grind  of  our  sledges  on  the  ir- 
regular ice  and  the  joyous,  unrestrained  barking  of  the 
leaping,  tearing,  restless  dog-teams. 

To  the  south  of  us,  a  misty  orange  flush  suffused 
the  dun-colored  sky.  The  sun,  which  we  had  not  seen 
for  an  entire  month,  now  late  in  November  far  below 
the  horizon,  sent  to  us  the  dim  radiance  of  a  far-away 
smile.  After  its  setting  it  had,  about  noon  time  of  each 
day,  set  the  sky  faintly  aglow,  this  radiance  decreasing 
until  it  was  lost  in  the  brightness  of  the  midday  moon. 
Rising  above  the  horizon,  a  suspended  lamp  of  frosty, 
pearl-colored  glass,  the  moon  for  ten  days  of  twenty- 
four  hours,  each  month,  encircled  about  us,  now  lost 
behind  ice-sheeted  mountains,  again  subdued  under 
colored  films  of  frost  clouds,  but  always  relieving  the 
night  of  its  gloom,  and  permitting,  when  the  wind  was 
not  too  turbulent,  outside  activity. 

A  wonderful  animal  is  the  sea-horse,  or  whale- 
horse,  as  the  Icelanders  and  Dutch  (from  whom  we  have 
borrowed  "walrus'*)  call  it.  In  the  summer  its  life  is 
easy  and  its  time  is  spent  in  almost  perpetual  sunny 
dreams,  but  in  winter  it  would  be  difficult  to  conceive 
of  a  harder  existence  than  its  own.  Finding  food  in 


116  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

shallow  Polar  seas,  it  comes  to  permanent  open  water, 
or  to  the  crevasses  of  an  active  pack  for  breath.  With 
but  a  few  minutes'  rest  on  a  storm-swept  surface,  it  ex- 
plores, without  other  relief  for  weeks,  the  double-night 
darkness  of  unknown  depths  under  the  frozen  sea.  At 
last,  when  no  longer  able  to  move  its  huge  web  feet,  it 
rises  on  the  ice  or  seeks  ice-locked  waters  for  a  needed 
rest.  In  winter,  the  thump  of  its  ponderous  head  keeps 
the  young  ice  from  closing  its  breathing  place.  If  on  ice, 
its  thick  skin,  its  blanket  of  blubber,  and  an  automatic 
shiver,  keep  its  blood  from  hardening.  This  is  man's 
opportunity  to  secure  meat  and  fuel,  but  the  quest  in- 
volves a  task  to  which  no  unaided  paleface  is  equal.  The 
night  hunt  of  the  walrus  is  Eskimo  sport,  but  It  is  never- 
theless sport  of  a  most  engaging  and  exciting  order. 

So  that  I  might  not  be  compelled  to  start  on  my 
dash  stintedly  equipped,  we  now  prepared  for  such  an 
adventure  by  moonlight.  Before  this  time  there  had 
not  been  sufficient  atmospheric  stability  and  ice  con- 
tinuity to  promise  comparative  safety.  My  heart  ex- 
ulted as  I  heard  the  crack  of  the  whips  in  the  electric 
air  and  felt  the  earth  rush  giddily  under  my  feet  as  I 
leaped  behind  the  speeding  teams.  The  fever  of  the 
quest  was  in  my  veins;  its  very  danger  lent  an  inde- 
scribable thrill,  for  success  now  meant  more  to  me  than 
perhaps  hunting  had  ever  meant  to  any  man. 

Not  long  after  we  started,  darkness  descended.  The 
moon  slowly  passed  behind  an  impenetrable  curtain  of 
inky  clouds;  the  orange  glow  of  the  sun  faded;  and  we 
were  surrounded  on  every  side  by  a  blackness  so  thick 
that  it  was  almost  palpable. 

As  I  now  recall  that  mad  race  I  marvel  how  we 


THE  MOONLIGHT  QUEST  OF  THE  WALRUS  117 

escaped  smashing  sledges,  breaking  our  limbs,  crush- 
ing our  heads.  We  tumbled  and  jumped  in  a  frantic 
race  over  the  broken,  irregular  pack-ice  from  Annoatok 
to  Cape  Alexander,  a  distance  of  thirty  miles  as  the 
raven  moves,  but  more  than  forty  miles  as  we  follow  the 
sledge  trail.  Here  the  ice  became  thin ;  we  felt  cold  mist 
rising  from  open  water;  and  now  and  then,  in  an  oc- 
casional breaking  of  the  darkness,  we  could  discern 
vast  sheets  or  snaky  leads  of  open  sea  ahead  of  us. 

To  reach  the  southern  waters  where  the  walrus  were 
to  be  found,  we  now  had  to  seek  an  overland  route, 
which  would  take  us  over  the  frozen  Greenland  moun- 
tains and  lead  us  through  the  murky  clouds,  a  route  of 
twisting  detours,  gashed  glaciers,  upturned  barriers  of 
rock  and  ice,  swept  by  blinding  winds,  unmarked  by  any 
trail,  and  which  writhed  painfully  beyond  us  for  forty- 
seven  miles. 

Arriving  at  the  limit  of  traversable  sea-ice,  we 
now  paused  before  sloping  cliffs  of  glacial  land-ice 
which  we  had  to  climb.  Picture  to  yourself  a  vast  glac- 
ier rising  precipitously,  like  a  gigantic  wall,  thousands 
of  feet  above  you,  and  creeping  tortuously  up  its  glassy, 
purple  face,  if  such  that  surface  could  be  called,  formed 
by  the  piling  of  one  glacial  formation  upon  the  other 
in  the  descent  through  the  valleys,  a  twisting,  retreat- 
ing road  of  jagged  ice  strata,  of  earth  and  stone, 
blocked  here  and  there  by  apparently  impassable  im- 
pediments, pausing  at  almost  unscalable,  frozen  cliffs', 
and  at  times  no  wider  than  a  few  yards.  Imagine  your- 
self pausing,  as  we  suddenly  did,  and  viewing  the  per- 
ilous ascent,  the  only  way  open  to  us,  revealed  in  the 
passing  glimmer  of  the  pale,  circling  moon,  despair, 


118  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

fear  and  hope  tugging  at  your  heart.  Whipped  across 
the  sky  by  the  lashing  winds,  the  torn  clouds,  passing 
the  face  of  the  moon,  cast  magnified  and  grotesquely 
gesticulating  shadows  on  the  glistening  face  of  the  icy 
Gibraltar  before  us.  Some  of  these  misty  shapes 
seemed  to  threaten,  others  shook  their  rag-like  arms, 
beckoning  forward.  Upon  the  face  of  the  towering, 
perpendicular  ice-wall,  great  hummocks  like  the 
gnarled  black  limbs  of  a  huge  tree  twisted  upwards. 

I  realized  that  the  frightful  ascent  must  be  made. 
The  goal  of  my  single  aim  suddenly  robbed  the  climb 
of  its  terrors.  I  dropped  my  whip.  Six  other  whips 
cracked  through  the  air.  Koo-loo-ting-wah  said,  "Kali- 
Kah!"  (Come,  come!)  But  Sotia  said,  "lodaria-Iod- 
aria!"  (Impossible,  impossible!)  The  dogs  emitted 
shrill  howls.  Holding  the  rear  upstanders  of  the 
sledges,  we  helped  to  push  them  forward. 

Before  us,  the  fifty  dogs  climbed  like  cats  through 
narrow  apertures  of  the  ice,  or  took  long  leaps  over  the 
serried  battlements  that  barred  our  way.  We  stumbled 
after,  sometimes  we  fell.  Again  we  had  to  lift  the 
sledges  after  the  dogs. 

From  the  top  of  the  glacier  a  furious  wind  brushed 
us  backwards.  We  felt  the  steaming  breath  of  the 
laboring  dogs  in  our  faces.  My  heart  thumped  pain- 
fully. Now  and  then  the  moon  disappeared;  we  fol- 
lowed the  unfailing  instinct  of  the  animals.  I  realized 
that  a  misstep  might  plunge  me  to  a  horrible  death  in 
the  ice  abysm  below.  With  a  howl  of  joy  from  drivers, 
the  dogs  finally  leaped  to  the  naked  surface  of  the 
wind-swept  glacier.  Panting  in  indescribable  relief, 
we  followed.  But  the  worst  part  of  the  journey  lay 


THE  MOONLIGHT  QUEST  OF  THE  WALRUS  119 

before  us.  The  sable  clouds,  like  the  curtain  of  some 
cyclopean  stage,  seemed  suddenly  drawn  aside  as  if 
by  an  invisible  hand. 

Upon  the  illimitable  stretch  of  ice  rising  be- 
fore us  like  the  slopes  of  a  glass  mountain,  the 
full  rays  of  the  moon  poured  liquid  silver.  Only  in 
dreams  had  such  a  scene  as  this  been  revealed  to  me — 
in  dreams  of  the  enchanted  North — which  did  not  now 
equal  reality.  The  spectacle  filled  me  with  both  awed 
delight  and  a  sense  of  terror. 

Beyond  the  fan- shaped  teams  of  dogs  the  eyes  ran 
over  fields  of  night-blackened  blue,  gashed  and  broken 
by  bottomless  canyons  which  twisted  like  purple  ser- 
pents in  every  direction.  Vast  expanses  of  smooth 
surface,  polished  by  the  constant  winds,  reflected  the 
glow  of  the  moon  and  gleamed  like  isles  of  silver  in 
a  motionless,  deep,  sapphire  sea;  but  all  was  covered 
with  the  air  of  night.  In  the  moonlight,  the  jagged  ir- 
regular contours  of  the  broken  ice  became  touched  with 
a  burning  gilt.  A  constant  effect  like  running  quick- 
silver played  about  us  as  the  moon  sailed  around  the 
heavens. 

Above  us  the  ice  pinnacles  were  lost  in  the  clouds, 
huge  billowy  masses  that  were  blown  in  the  wind 
troublously,  like  the  heavy  black  tresses  of  some  Titan 
woman.  I  thrilled  with  the  beauty  of  the  magical  spec- 
tacle, yet,  when  I  viewed  the  perilous  pathway,  I  felt 
the  grip  of  terror  again  at  my  heart. 

I  was  aroused  from  my  brief  reverie  by  the  familiar 
"Huk-huk!  Ah-gah!  Ah-gah!"  of  the  Eskimos,  and 
placing  our  hands  upon  the  sledges,  we  leaped  forward 
into  the  purple-gashed  sea,  with  its  blinding  sheets  of 


120  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

silver.  I  seemed  carried  through  a  world  such  as  the 
old  Norsemen  sang  of  in  the  sagas. 

Of  a  sudden,  as  though  extinguished,  the  moon- 
light faded,  huge  shadows  leaped  onto  the  ice  before  us, 
frenziedly  waved  their  arms  and  melted  into  the  pitch- 
black  darkness  which  descended.  I  had  read  imag- 
inative tales  of  wanderings  in  the  nether  region  of  the 
dead,  but  only  now  did  I  have  a  faint  glimmering  of 
the  terror  (with  its  certain,  exultant  intoxication) 
which  lost  souls  must  feel  when  they  wander  in  a  dark- 
ness beset  with  invisible  horrors. 

Over  the  ice,  cut  with  innumerable  chasms  and 
neck-breaking  irregularities,  we  rushed  in  the  dark. 
The  wind  moaned  down  from  the  despairing  cloud-en- 
folded heights  above;  it  tore  through  the  bottomless 
gullies  on  every  side  with  a  hungry  roar.  Beads  of 
perspiration  rolled  down  my  face  and  froze  into  icicles 
on  my  chin  and  furs.  The  temperature  was  48°  below 
zero. 

Occasionally  we  stopped  a  moment  to  gasp  for 
breath.  I  could  hear  the  panting  of  my  companions, 
the  labor  of  the  dogs.  A  few  seconds'  inaction  was 
followed  by  convulsive  shivering;  the  pain  of  stopping 
was  more  excruciating  than  that-  of  climbing.  In  the 
darkness,  the  calls  of  the  invisible  Eskimos  to  the  dogs 
seemed  like  the  weird  appeals  of  disembodied  things.  I 
felt  each  moment  the  imminent  danger  of  a  frightful 
death;  yet  the  dogs  with  their  marvelous  intuition, 
twisting  this  way  and  that,  and  sometimes  retreating, 
sensed  the  open  leads  ahead  and  rushed  forward  safely. 

At  times  I  felt  the  yawning  depth  of  ice  canyons 
immediately  by  my  side — that  a  step  might  plunge  me 


THE  MOONLIGHT  QUEST  OF  THE  WALRUS 

into  the  depths.  Desperately  I  held  on  to  the  sledges, 
and  was  dragged  along.  Such  an  experience  might 
well  turn  the  hair  of  the  most  expert  Alpinist  white  in 
one  night;  yet  I  did  not  have  time  to  dwell  fully  upon 
the  dangers,  and  I  was  carried  over  a  trip  more  perilous 
than,  later,  proved  the  actual  journey  on  sea-ice  to  the 
Pole. 

Occasionally  the  moon  peered  forth  from  its  clouds 
and  brightened  the  gloom.  In  its  light  the  ice  fields 
swam  dizzily  by  us,  as  a  landscape  seen  from  the  win- 
dow of  a  train;  the  open  gashed  gullies  writhed  like 
snakes,  pinnacles  dancing  like  silver  spears.  By  alter- 
nate running  and  riding  we  managed  to  keep  from 
freezing  and  sweating.  We  finally  reached  an  altitude 
of  inland  ice  exceeding  two  thousand  feet.  Silver  fog; 
crept  under  our  feet.  We  wrere  traveling  now  in  a, 
world  of  clouds. 

We  paced  twelve  miles  at  a  rapid  speed.  In  the 
light  of  the  moon-burned  clouds  which  rolled  about  our 
heads,  I  could  see  the  forms  of  my  companions  only 
indistinctly.  The  dogs  ahead  were  veiled  in  the  argent, 
tremulous  mists ;  the  ice  sped  under  me ;  I  was  no  longer 
conscious  of  an  earthly  footing;  I  might  have  been 
soaring  in  space. 

We  began  to  descend.  Suddenly  the  dogs  started 
in  leaps  to  fly  through  the  air.  Our  sleds  were  jerked 
into  clouds  of  cutting  snow.  We  jabbed  our  feet  into 
the  drift  to  check  the  mad  speed.  On  each  side  we  saw 
a  huge  mountain,  seemingly  thousands  of  feet  above  us, 
but  ahead  was  nothing  but  the  void  of  empty  space. 
Soon  the  sledges  shot  beyond  the  dogs.  We  threw  our- 
selves off  to  check  the  momentum.  With  dog  intelli- 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

gence  and  savage  strength  judiciously  expended,  we 
reached  the  sea  level  by  flying  flights  over  dangerous 
slopes,  and,  like  cats,  we  landed  on  nimble  feet  in 
Sontag  Bay. 

A  bivouac  was  arranged  under  a  dome  of  snow- 
blocks,  and  exhausted  by  the  mad  journey,  a  sleep  of 
twenty-four  hours  was  indulged  in. 

Now,  for  a  time,  our  task  was  easier.  A  course 
was  set  along  the  land,  southward.  Each  of  the  native 
settlements  was  visited.  The  season's  gossip  was  ex- 
changed. Presents  went  into  each  household,  and  a 
return  of  furs  and  useful  products  filled  our  sledges. 
Thus  the  time  was  occupied  in  profitable  visits  during 
the  feeble  light  of  the  November  moon.  With  the 
December  moon  we  returned  northward  to  Ser-wah- 
ding-wah. 

Then  our  struggle  began  anew  for  the  walrus 
grounds.  The  Polar  drift,  forcing  through  Smith 
Sound,  left  an  open  space  of  water  about  ten  miles 
south  of  Cape  Alexander.  This  disturbed  area  was  our 
destination.  It  was  marked  by  a  dark  cloud,  a  ".water- 
sky" — against  the  pearly  glow  of  the  southern  heavens. 
The  ice  surface  was  smooth.  We  did  not  encounter 
the  crushed  heaps  of  ice  of  the  northern  route,  but 
there  were  frequent  crevasses  which,  though  cemented 
with  new  ice,  gave  us  considerable  anxiety,  for  I  real- 
ized that  if  a  northwesterly  storm  should  suddenly  strike 
the  pack  we  might  be  carried  helplessly  adrift. 

The  urgency  of  our  mission  to  secure  dog  food, 
however,  left  no  alternative.  It  was  better  to  brave 
death  now,  I  thought,  than  to  perish  from  scant  supplies 
on  the  Polar  trip.  We  had  not  gone  far  before  the 


THE  MOONLIGHT  QUEST  OF  THE  WALRUS  123 

ever-keen  canine  noses  detected  bear  tracks  on  the  ice. 
These  we  shot  over  the  pack  surface  in  true  battle  spirit. 
As  the  bears  were  evidently  bound  for  the  same  hunt- 
ing grounds,  this  course  was  accepted  as  good  enough 
for  us.  Although  the  trail  was  laid  in  a  circuitous 
route,  it  avoided  the  most  difficult  pressure  angles.  We 
traveled  until  late  in  the  day.  The  moon  was  low, 
and  the  dark  purple  hue  of  the  night  blackened  the 
snows. 

Of  a  sudden  we  paused.  From  a  distance  came 
a  low  call  of  walrus  bulls.  The  bass,  nasal  bellow  was 
muffled  by  the  low  temperature,  and  did  not  thump  the 
ear  drums  with  the  force  of  the  cry  in  sunny  summer. 
My  six  companions  shouted  with  glee,  and  became 
almost  hysterical  with  excitement.  The  dogs,  hearing 
the  call,  howled  and  jumped  to  jerk  the  sledges.  We 
dropped  our  whips,  and  they  responded  with  all  their 
brute  force  in  one  bound.  It  was  difficult  to  hold  to 
the  sledges  as  we  shot  over  the  blackening  snows. 

The  ice-fields  became  smaller  as  we  advanced; 
dangerous  thin  ice  intervened;  but  the  owl-eyes  of  the 
Eskimos  knew  just  where  to  find  safe  ice.  The  sounds 
increased  as  we  approached.  We  descended  from  the 
snow-covered  ice  to  thin,  black  ice  and  for  a  time  I 
felt  as  if  we  were  flying  over  the  open  surface  of  the 
deep.  With  a  low  call,  the  dogs  were  stopped.  They 
were  detached  from  the  sledges  and  tied  to  holes  drilled 
with  a  knife  in  ice  boulders. 

Pushing  the  sledges  upon  which  rested  the  har- 
poon, the  lance,  the  gun  and  knives,  each  one  of  us 
advanced  at  some  distance  from  his  neighbor.  Soon, 
lines  of  mist  told  of  dangerous  breaks,  and  the  ice  was 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

carefully  tested  with  the  spiked  shaft  before  ventur- 
ing farther.  I  was  behind  Koolooting-wah's  sledge. 
While  he  was  creeping  up  to  the  water's  edge,  there 
came  the  rush  of  a  spouting  breath  so  near  that  we 
seemed  to  feel  the  crystal  spray.  I  took  his  place  and 
pushed  the  sledge  along. 

Taking  the  harpoon,  with  stealthy  strides  Koo-loo- 
ting-wah  moved  to  the  water's  edge  and  waited  for  the 
next  spout.  We  heard  other  spouts  in  various  direc- 
tions, and  in  the  dark  water,  slightly  lighted  by  the 
declining  moon,  we  saw  other  dark  spots  of  spray. 
Suddenly  a  burst  of  steam  startled  me.  It  was  near 
the  ice  where  Koo-loo-ting-wah  lay.  I  was  about  to 
shout,  but  the  Eskimo  turned,  held  up  his  hand  and 
whispered  ffOuit-ou"  (Wait.) 

Then,  very  slowly,  he  lowered  his  body,  spread  out 
his  form  on  the  ice,  and  startlingly  imitated  the  wal- 
rus call.  His  voice  preternaturally  bellowed  through 
the  night.  Out  of  the  inky  water,  a  walrus  lifted  its 
head.  I  saw  its  long,  white,  spiral,  ivory  tusk  and  two 
phosphorescent  eyes.  Koo-loo-ting-wah  did  not  stir. 
I  shivered  with  cold  and  impatience.  Why  did  he  not 
strike?  Our  prey  seemed  within  our  hands.  I  uttered 
an  exclamation  of  vexed  disappointment  when,  with  a 
splash,  the  head  disappeared,  leaving  on  the  water  a 
line  of  algae  fire. 

For  several  minutes  I  stood  gazing  seaward.  Far 
away  on  the  black  ocean,  to  my  amazement,  I  saw 
lights  appearing  like  distant  lighthouse  signals,  or  the 
mast  lanterns  on  passing  ships.  They  flashed  and 
suddenly  faded,  these  strange  will-o'-the  wisps  of  the 
Arctic  sea.  In  a  moment  I  realized  that  the  lights  were 


THE  MOONLIGHT  QUEST  OF  THE  WALRUS  125 

caused  by  distant  icebergs  crashing  against  one  another. 
On  the  bergs  as  on  the  surface  of  the  sea,  as  it  happened 
now,  were  coatings  of  a  teeming  germ  life,  the  same 
which  causes  phosphorescence  in  the  trail  of  an  ocean 
ship.  The  effect  was  indescribably  weird. 

Suddenly  I  jumped  backward,  appalled  by  a  noise 
that  reverberated  shudderingly  under  the  ice  on  which 
I  stood.  The  ice  shook  as  if  with  an  earthquake.  I 
hastily  retreated,  but  Koo-loo-ting-wah,  lying  by  the 
water's  edge,  never  stirred.  A  dead  man  could  not  have 
been  less  responsive.  While  I  was  wondering  as  to  the 
cause  of  the  upheaval,  the  ice,  within  a  few  feet  of  Koo- 
loo-ting-wah,  was  suddenly  torn  asunder  as  if  by  a  sub- 
marine explosion.  Koo-loo-ting-wah  leaped  into  the 
air  and  descended  apparently  toward  the  distending 
space  of  turbulent  open  water.  I  saw  him  raise  his  arm 
and  deliver  a  harpoon  with  amazing  dexterity;  at  the 
same  instant  I  had  seen  also  the  white  tusk  and  phos- 
phorescent eyes  of  a  walrus  appear  for  a  moment  in  the 
black  water  and  then  sink. 

The  harpoon  had  gone  home ;  the  line  was  run  out ; 
a  spiked  lance  shaft  was  driven  into  the  ice  through 
a  loop  in  the  end  of  the  line,  and  the  line  was  thus 
fastened.  We  knew  the  wounded  beast  would  have  to 
rise  for  air.  With  rifle  and  lance  ready,  we  waited, 
intending,  each  time  a  spout  of  water  arose,  to  drive 
holes  into  the  tough  armor  of  skin  until  the  beast's 
vitals  were  tapped.  By  feeling  the  line,  I  could  sense 
the  struggles  of  the  wild  creature  below  in  the  depths 
of  the  sea.  Then  the  line  would  slacken,  a  spout  of 
steam  would  rise  from  the  water,  Koo-loo-ting-wah 
would  drive  a  spear,  I  a  shot  from  my  gun.  The  air 


126  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

would  become  oppressive  with  the  creature's  frightful 
bellowing.  Then  would  come  an  interval  of  silence. 

For  about  two  hours  we  kept  up  the  battle.  Then 
the  line  slackened,  Koo-loo-ting-wah  called  the  others, 
and  together  we  drew  the  huge  carcass,  steaming  with 
blood,  to  the  surface  of  the  ice.  Smelling  the  odorous 
wet  blood,  the  dogs  exultantly  howled. 

Falling  upon  the  animal,  the  natives,  trained  in 
the  art,  with  sharp  knives  had  soon  dressed  the  thick 
meat  and  blubber  from  the  bones  and  lashed  the  welter- 
ing mass  on  a  sledge.  This  done,  with  quick  despatch, 
they  separated,  dashed  along  the  edge  of  the  ice,  casting 
harpoons  whenever  the  small  geysers  appeared  on  the 
water.  We  were  in  excellent  luck.  One  walrus  after 
another  was  dragged  lumberingly  on  the  ice,  and  in  the 
course  of  several  hours  the  seven  sledges  were  heavily 
loaded  with  the  precious  supplies  which  would  now 
enable  me,  liberally  equipped,  to  start  Poleward.  We 
gave  our  dogs  a  light  meal,  and  started  landward,  leav- 
ing great  piles  of  walrus  meat  behind  us  on  the  ice. 

Although  we  were  tired  on  reaching  land,  we  began 
to  build  several  snow-houses  in  which  to  sleep.  Not  far 
away  was  an  Eskimo  village.  Summoning  the  natives 
to  help  us  bring  in  the  spoils  of  the  hunt  which  had  been 
left  on  the  ice,  we  first  indulged  in  a  gluttonous  feast 
of  uncooked  meat,  in  which  the  dogs  ravenously  joined. 
The  meat  tasted  like  train-oil.  The  work  of  bringing 
in  the  meat  and  blubber  and  caching  it  for  subsequent 
gathering  was  hardly  finished  when,  from  the  ominous, 
glacial-covered  highlands,  a  winter  blast  suddenly  be- 
gan to  come  with  terrific  and  increasing  fury. 

Blinding  gusts  of  snow  whipped  the  frozen  earth. 


THE  MOONLIGHT  QUEST  OF  THE  WALRUS  127 

The  wind  shrieked  fiendishly.  Above  its  roar,  not  three 
hours  after  our  last  trip  on  the  ice,  a  resounding,  crash- 
ing noise  rose  above  the  storm.  Braving  the  blasts,  I 
went  outside  the  igloo.  Through  the  darkness  I  could 
see  white  curvatures  of  piling  sea-ice.  I  could  hear  the 
rush  and  crashing  of  huge  floes  and  glaciers  being  car- 
ried seaward.  Had  we  waited  another  day,  had  we  been 
out  on  the  ice  seeking  walrus  just  twenty- four  hours 
after  our  successful  hunt,  we  should  have  been  carried 
away  in  the  sudden  roaring  gale,  and  hopelessly  peri- 
shed in  the  wind-swept  deep. 

During  the  night,  or  hours  usually  allotted  to  rest, 
the  noise  continued  unabated.  I  failed  to  sleep.  Now 
and  then,  a  crashing  noise  shivered  through  the  storm. 
An  igloo  from  the  nearby  settlement  was  swept  into 
the  sea.  During  the  gale  many  of  the  natives  who  had 
retired  with  their  clothes  hung  out  to  dry,  awoke  to 
find  that  the  wind  had  robbed  them  of  their  valuable 
winter  furs. 

Some  time  along  in  the  course  of  the  night,  I 
heard  outside  excited  Eskimos  shouting.  There  was 
terror  in  the  voices.  Arising  and  dressing  hastily,  I 
rushed  into  the  teeth  of  the  storm.  Not  far  away  were 
a  number  of  natives  rushing  along  the  land  some 
twenty  feet  beneath  which  the  sea  lapped  the  land-ice 
with  furious  tongues.  They  had  cast  lines  into  the  sea 
and  were  shouting,  it  seemed,  to  someone  who  was 
struggling  in  the  hopeless,  frigid  tumult  of  water. 

I  soon  learned  of  the  dreadful  catastrophe.  Ky- 
un-a,  an  old  and  cautious  native,  awakened  by  the  storm 
a  brief  while  before,  after  dressing  himself,  ventured 
outside  his  stone  house  to  secure  articles  which  he  had 


128  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

left  there.  As  was  learned  later,  he  had  just  tied  his 
sledge  to  a  rock  when  a  gust  of  wind  resistlessly  rushed 
seaward,  lifted  the  aged  man  from  his  feet,  and  dropped 
him  into  the  sea.  Through  the  storm,  his  dreadful 
cries  attracted  his  companions.  Some  who"  were  now 
tugging  at  the  lines,  were  barely  covered  with  fur  rugs 
which  they  had  thrown  about  them,  and  their  limbs 
were  partly  bare.  Now  and  then,  a  blinding  gust  of 
wind,  filled  with  freezing  snow  crystals,  almost  lifted 
us  from  our  feet.  The  sea  lapped  its  tongues  sicken- 
ingly  below  us. 

Finally  a  limp  body,  ice-sheeted,  dripping  with 
water,  yet  clinging  with  its  mummied  frozen  hands  to 
the  line,  was  hauled  up  on  the  ice.  Ky-un-a,  uncon- 
scious, was  carried  to  his  house  about  five  hundred  feet 
away.  There,  after  wrapping  him  in  furs,  in  a  brave 
effort  to  save  his  life,  the  natives  cut  open  his  fur  gar- 
ments. The  fur,  frozen  solid  by  the  frigid  blasts  in  the 
brief  period  which  had  elapsed  since  his  being  lifted  from 
the  water,  took  with  it,  in  parting  from  his  body,  long 
patches  of  skin,  leaving  the  quivering  raw  flesh  exposed 
as  though  by  a  burn.  For  three  days  the  aged  man  lay 
dying,  suffering  excruciating  tortures,  the  victim  of 
merely  a  common  accident,  which  at  any  time  may  hap- 
pen to  anyone  of  these  Spartan  people.  I  shall  never 
forget  the  harrowing  moans  of  the  suffering  man  pierc- 
ing the  storm.  Perhaps  it  had  been  merciful  to  let  him 
perish  in  the  sea. 

Ky-un-a's  old  home  was  some  forty  miles  distant. 
To  it,  that  he  might  die  there,  he  desired  to  go.  On  the 
fourth  day  after  the  accident,  he  was  placed  in  a  litter, 
covered  with  warm  furs,  and  borne  over  the  smooth  ice- 


THE  MOONLIGHT  QUEST  OF  THE  WALRUS  129 

fields.  I  shall  never  forget  that  dismal  and  solemn 
procession.  A  benign  calm  prevailed  over  land  and  sea. 
The  orange  glow  of  a  luxurious  moon  set  the  ice  coldly 
aflame.  Long  shadows,  like  spectral  mourners,  robed 
in  purple,  loomed  before  the  tiny  procession.  Now  and 
then,  as  they  dwindled  in  the  distance,  I  saw  them,  like 
black  dots,  crossing  areas  of  polished  ice  which  glowed 
like  mirror  lakes  of  silver.  From  the  distance,  softly 
shuddered  the  decreasing  moans  of  the  dying  man ;  then 
there  was  silence.  I  marvelled  again  upon  the  lure  of 
this  eerily,  weirdly  beautiful  land,  where,  always  im- 
minent, death  can  be  so  terrible. 


MIDNIGHT  AND  MID-WINTER 

THE  EQUIPMENT  AND  ITS  PROBLEMS — NEW  ART  IN  THE 
MAKING  OF  SLEDGES  COMBINING  LIGHTNESS — PROG- 
RESS OF  THE  PREPARATIONS CHRISTMAS,,  WITH  ITS 

GLAD  TIDINGS  AND  AUGURIES  FOR  SUCCESS  IN  QUEST 
OF  THE  POLE 

IX 

THE  COMING  OF  THE  ESKIMO  STORK 

In  planning  for  the  Polar  dash  I  appreciated  fully 
the  vital  importance  of  sledges.  These,  I  realized, 
must  possess,  to  an  ultimate*  degree,  the  combined 
strength  of  steel  with  the  lightness  and  elasticity  of 
the  strongest  wood.  The  sledge  must  neither  be  flimsy 
nor  bulky;  nor  should  it  be  heavy  or  rigid.  After  a 
careful  study  of  the  art  of  sledge-traveling  from  the 
earliest  time  to  the  present  day,  after  years  of  sledging 
and  sledge  observation  in  Greenland,  the  Antarctic  and 
Alaska,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  success  "was  de- 
pendent, not  upon  any  one  type  of  sledge,  but  upon 
local  fitness. 

All  natives  of  the  frigid  wilds  have  devised  sledges, 
traveling  and  camp  equipment  to  fit  their  local  needs. 
The  collective  lessons  of  ages  are  to  be  read  in  this  de- 
velopment of  primitive  sledge  traveling.  If  these  wild 
people  had  been  provided  with  the  best  material  from 


MIDNIGHT  AND  MID-WINTER  131 

which  to  work  out  their  hard  problems  of  life,  then  it  is 
probable  that  their  methods  could  not  be  improved. 
But  neither  the  Indian  nor  the  Eskimo  was  ever  in 
possession  of  either  the  tools  or  the  raw  material  to  fit 
their  inventive  genius  for  making  the  best  equipment. 
Therefore,  I  had  studied  first  the  accumulated  results 
of  the  sledge  of  primitive  man  and  from  this  tried  to 
construct  a  sledge  with  its  accessories  in  which  were  in- 
cluded the  advantages  of  up-to-date  mechanics  with  the 
use  of  the  most  durable  material  which  a  search  of  the 
entire  globe  had  afforded  me.* 

The  McClintock  sledges,  made  of  bent  wood  with 
wide  runners,  had  been  adopted  by  nearly  all  explorers, 
under  different  names  and  with  considerable  modifica- 
tions, for  fifty  years.  This  sledge  is  still  the  best  type 
for  deep  soft  snow  conditions,  for  which  it  was  orig- 
inally intended.  But  such  snow  is  not  often  found  on 
the  ice  of  the  Polar  sea.  The  native  sledge  which  Peary 
copied,  although  well  adapted  to  local  use  along  the  ice- 
foot and  the  land- adhering  pack,  is  not  the  best  sledge 
for  a  trans-boreal  run.  This  is  because  it  is  too  heavy 
and  too  easily  broken,  and  breakable  in  such  a  way  that 
it  cannot  be  quickly  repaired. 

*The  so-called  "Jesup"  sled,  which  Mr.  Peary  used  on  his  last  Polar 
trip,  is  a  copy  of  the  Eskimo  sledge,  a  lumbering,  unwieldy  thing  weighing 
over  one  hundred  pounds  and  which  bears  the  same  relation  to  a  refined 
bent-hickory  vehicle  that  a  lumber  cart  does  to  an  express  wagon.  In  this 
"Jesup"  sledge  there  is  a  dead  weight  of  over  fifty  pounds  of  useless  wood. 
The  needless  weight  thus  carried  can,  in  a  better  sledge,  be  replaced  by 
fifty  pounds  of  food.  This  fifty  pounds  will  feed  one  man  over  the  entire 
route  to  the  Pole.  Mr.  Peary  claims  that  the  Pole  is  not  reachable  without 
this  sled,  but  Borup,  in  his  book,  reports  that  most  of  the  sledges  were 
broken  at  the  first  trial. 

Since  an  explorer's  success  is  dependent  upon  his  ability  to  transport 
food  it  behooves  him  to  eliminate  useless  weight.  Therefore,  the  solid 
runner  sled  is  as  much  out  of  place  as  a  solid  wood  wheel  would  be  in  an 
automobile. 


132  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

For  the  Arctic  pack,  a  sledge  must  be  of  a  moderate 
length,  with  considerable  width.  Narrow  runners  offer 
less  friction  and  generally  give  sufficient  bearing  sur- 
face. The  other  qualities  vital  to  quick  movement  and 
durability  are  lightness,  elasticity  and  interchangeability 
of  parts.  All  of  these  conditions  I  planned  to  meet  in 
a  new  pattern  of  sledge  which  should  combine  the  dura- 
bility of  the  Eskimo  sledges  and  the  lightness  of  the 
Yukon  sledge  of  Alaska. 

The  making  of  a  suitable  sledge  caused  me  a  good 
deal  of  concern.  Before  leaving  New  York  I  had 
taken  the  precaution  of  selecting  an  abundance  of  the 
best  hickory  wood  in  approximately  correct  sizes  for 
sledge  construction.  Suitable  tools  had  also  been  pro- 
vided. Now,  as  the  long  winter  with  its  months  of 
darkness  curtailed  the  time  of  outside  movement,  the 
box-house  was  refitted  as  a  workshop.  From  eight  to 
ten  men  were  at  the  benches,  eight  hours  each  day, 
shaping  and  bending  runners,  fitting  and  lashing  inter- 
changeable cross  bars  and  posts,  and  riveting  the  iron 
shoes.  Thus  the  sledge  parts  were  manufactured  to 
possess  the  same  facilities  to  fit  not  only  all  other 
sledges,  but  also  other  parts  of  the  same  sledge.  If, 
therefore,  part  of  a  sledge  should  be  broken,  other  parts 
of  a  discarded  sledge  could  offer  repair  sections  easily. 

The  general  construction  of  this  new  sledge  is 
easily  understood  from  the  various  photographs  pre- 
sented. All  joints  were  made  elastic  by  seal-thong 
lashings.  The  sledges  were  twelve  feet  long  and  thirty 
inches  wide;  the  runners  had  a  width  of  an  inch  and  an 
eighth.  Each  part  and  each  completed  sledge  was 
thoroughly  tested  before  it  was  finally  loaded  for  the 


MIDNIGHT  AND  MID-WINTER  133 

long  run.  For  dog  harness,  the  Greenland  Eskimo 
pattern  was  adopted.  But  canine  habits  are  such 
that  when  rations  are  reduced  to  minimum  limits 
the  leather  strips  disappear  as  food.  To  obviate  this 
disaster,  the  shoulder  straps  were  made  of  folds  of 
strong  canvas,  while  the  traces  were  cut  from  cotton 
log  line. 

A  boat  is  an  important  adjunct  to  every  sledge 
expedition  which  hopes  to  venture  far  from  its  base 
of  operations.  It  is  a  matter  of  necessity,  even  when 
following  a  coast  line,  as  was  shown  by  the  mishap  of 
Mylius  Erickson,  for  if  he  had  had  a  boat  he  would 
himself  have  returned  to  tell  the  story  of  the  Danish 
Expedition  to  East  Greenland. 

Need  for  a  boat  comes  with  the  changing  condi- 
tions of  the  advancing  season.  Things  must  be  carried 
for  several  months  for  a  chance  use  in  the  last  stages 
of  the  return.  But  since  food  supplies  are  necessarily 
limited,  delay  is  fatal,  and  therefore,  when  open  water 
prevents  advance,  a  boat  is  so  vitally  necessary  as  to 
become  a  life  preserver.  Foolish  indeed  is  the  explorer 
who  pays  slight  attention  to  this  important  problem. 

The  transportation  of  a  boat,  however,  offers  many 
serious  difficulties.  Nansen  introduced  the  kayak,  and 
most  explorers  since  have  followed  his  example.  The 
Eskimo  canoe  serves  the  purpose  very  well,  but  to  carry 
it  for  three  months  without  hopeless  destruction  re- 
quires so  tremendous  an  amount  of  energy  as  to  make 
the  task  practically  impossible. 

Sectional  boats,  aluminum  boats,  skin  floats  and 
other  devices  had  been  tried,  but  to  all  there  is  the  same 
fatal  objection  on  a  Polar  trip,  of  impossible  trans- 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

portation.  But  it  seems  odd  that  the  ordinary  folding 
canvas  boat  has  not  been  pressed  into  this  service. 

We  found  such  a  canoe  boat  to  fit  the  situation 
exactly,  and  selected  a  twelve-foot  Eureka-shaped  boat 
with  wooden  frame.  The  slats,  spreaders  and  floor- 
pieces  were  utilized  as  parts  of  sledges.  The  canvas 
cover  served  as  a  floor  cloth  for  our  sleeping  bags.  Thus 
the  boat  did  useful  service  for  a  hundred  days  and  never 
seemed  needlessly  cumbersome.  When  the  craft  was 
finally  spread  for  use  as  a  boat,  in  it  we  carried  the 
sledge,  in  it  we  sought  game  for  food,  and  in  it  or  under 
it  we  camped.  Without  it  we  could  never  have  re- 
turned. 

Even  more  vital  than  the  choice  of  sledges,  more 
vital  than  anything  else,  I  knew,  in  such  a  trip  as  I 
proposed,  is  the  care  of  the  stomach.  From  the  pub- 
lished accounts  of  Arctic  traveling  it  is  impossible  to 
learn  a  fitting  ration,  and  I  hasten  to  add  that  I  well 
realized  that  our  own  experience  may  not  solve  the 
problem  for  future  expeditions.  The  gastronomic 
need  differs  with  every  man.  It  differs  with  every  ex- 
pedition, and  it  is  radically  different  with  every  nation. 
Thus,  when  De  Gerlache,  with  good  intentions,  forced 
Norwegian  food  into  French  stomachs,  he  learned  that 
there  is  a  nationality  in  gastronomies.  Nor  is  it  safe 
to  listen  to  scientific  advice,  for  the  stomach  is  arbitrary, 
and  stands  as  autocrat  over  every  human  sense  and 
passion  and  will  not  easily  yield  to  dictates. 

In  this  respect,  as  in  others,  I  was  helped  very 
much  by  the  natives.  The  Eskimo  is  ever  hungry,  but 
his  taste  is  normal.  Things  of  doubtful  value  in  nutri- 
tion form  no  part  in  his  dietary.  Animal  food,  con- 


MIDNIGHT  AND  MID-WINTER  135 

sisting  of  meat  and  fat,  is  entirely  satisfactory  as  a 
steady  diet  without  other  adjuncts.  His  food  requires 
neither  salt  nor  sugar,  nor  is  cooking  a  matter  of  neces- 
sity. 

Quantity  is  important,  but  quality  applies  only 
to  the  relative  proportion  of  fat.  With  this  key  to 
gastronomies,  pemmican  was  selected  as  the  staple  food, 
and  it  would  also  serve  equally  well  for  the  dogs. 

We  had  an  ample  supply  of  pemmican,  which  was 
made  of  pounded  dried  beef,  sprinkled  with  a  few 
raisins  and  some  currants,  and  slightly  sweetened  with 
sugar.  This  mixture  was  cemented  together  with 
heated  beef  tallow  and  run  into  tin  cans  containing  six 
pounds  each. 

This  combination  was  invented  by  the  American 
Indian,  and  the  supply  for  this  expedition  was  made  by 
Armour  of  Chicago  after  a  formula  furnished  by  Cap- 
tain Evelyn  B.  Baldwin.  Pemmican  had  been  used  be- 
fore as  part  of  the  long  list  of  foodstuffs  for  Arctic  expe- 
ditions, but  with  us  there  was  the  important  difference 
that  it  was  to  be  almost  entirely  the  whole  bill  of  fare 
when  away  from  game  haunts.  The  palate  surprises 
in  our  store  were  few. 

By  the  time  Christmas  approached  I  had  reason 
indeed  for  rejoicing.  Although  this  happy  season 
meant  little  to  me  as  a  holiday  of  gift-giving  and  feast 
ing,  it  came  with  auguries  for  success  in  the  thing  my 
heart  most  dearly  desired,  and  compared  to  which  earth 
had  nothing  more  alluring  to  give. 

Our  equipment  was  now  about  complete.  In  the 
box  house  were  tiers  of  new  sledges,  rows  of  boxes  and 
piles  of  bags  filled  with  clothing,  canned  supplies, 


136  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

dried  meat,  and  sets  of  strong  dog  harness.  The 
food,  fuel  and  camp  equipment  for  the  Polar  dash  were 
ready.  Everything  had  been  thoroughly  tested  and  put 
aside  for  a  final  examination.  Elated  by  our  success, 
and  filled  with  gratitude  to  the  faithful  natives,  I  de- 
clared a  week  of  holidays,  with  rejoicing  and  feasting. 
Feasting  was  at  this  time  especially  desirable,  for  we 
had  now  to  fatten  up  for  the  anticipated  race. 

Christmas  day  in  the  Arctic  does  not  dawn  with  the 
glow  which  children  in  waking  early  to  seek  their  be- 
decked tree,  view  outside  their  windows  in  more  south- 
ern lands.  Both  Christmas  day  and  Christmas  night 
are  black.  Only  the  stars  keep  their  endless  watch  in 
the  cold  skies. 

Standing  outside  my  igloo  on  the  happy  night,  I 
gazed  at  the  Pole  Star,  the  guardian  of  the  goal  I 
sought,  and  I  remembered  with  a  thrill  the  story  of  that 
mysterious  star  the  Wise  Men  had  followed,  of  the 
wonders  to  which  it  led  them,  and  I  felt  an  awed  rever- 
ence for  the  Power  that  set  these  unfaltering  beacons 
above  the  earth  and  had  written  in  their  golden  traces, 
with  a  burning  pen,  veiled  and  unrevealed  destinies 
which  men  for  ages  have  tried  to  learn. 

I  retired  to  sleep  with  thoughts  of  home.  I  thought 
of  my  children,  and  the  bated  expectancy  with  which 
they  were  now  going  to  bed,  of  their  hopefulness  of  the 
morrow,  and  the  unbounded  joy  they  would  have  in  gifts 
to  which  I  could  not  contribute.  I  think  tears  that 
night  wet  my  pillow  of  furs.  But  I  would  give  them, 
if  I  did  not  fail,  the  gift  of  a  father's  achievement,  of 
which,  with  a  glow,  I  felt  they  should  be  proud. 

The  next  morning  the  natives  arrived  at  the  box 


MIDNIGHT  AND  MID-WINTER  137 

house  early.  It  had  been  cleared  of  seamstresses  and 
workmen  the  day  before,  and  put  in  comparatively 
spick  and  span  order.  I  had  told  the  natives  they  were 
to  feed  to  repletion  during  the  week  of  holiday,  an  in- 
junction to  the  keeping  of  which  they  did  not  need 
much  urging. 

Early  Christmas  morning,  men  and  women  began 
working  overtime  on  the  two  festive  meals  which  were 
to  begin  that  day  and  continue  daily. 

About  this  time,  the  most  important  duty  of  our 
working  force  had  been  to  uncover  caches  and  dig  up 
piles  of  frozen  meat  and  blubber.  Of  this,  which  pos- 
sesses the  flavor  and  odor  of  Limburger  cheese,  and  also 
the  advantage,  if  such  it  be,  of  intoxicating  them,  the 
natives  are  particularly  fond.  While  a  woman  held  a 
native  torch  of  moss  dipped  in  oils  and  pierced  with  a 
stick,  the  men,  by  means  of  iron  bars  and  picks,  dug  up 
boulders  of  meat  just  as  coal  is  forced  from  mines. 

A  weird  spectacle  was  this,  the  soft  light  of  the 
blubber  lamp  dancing  on  the  spotless  snows,  the  soot- 
covered  faces  of  the  natives  grinning  while  they  worked. 
The  blubber  was  taken  close  to  their  igloos  and  placed 
on  raised  platforms  of  snow,  so  as  to  be  out  of  reach 
of  the  dogs.  Of  this  meat  and  blubber,  which  was 
served  raw,  partially  thawed,  cooked  and  also  frozen, 
the  natives  partook  during  most  of  their  waking  hours. 
They  enjoyed  it,  indeed,  as  much  as  turkey  was  being 
relished  in  my  far-away  home. 

Moreover  they  had,  what  was  an  important  deli- 
cacy, native  ice  cream.  This  would  not,  of  course, 
please  the  palate  of  those  accustomed  to  the  American 
delicacy,  but  to  the  Eskimo  maiden  it  possesses  all  the 


138  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

lure  of  creams,  sherberts  or  ice  cream  sodas.  With  us, 
sugar  in  the  process  of  digestion  turns  into  fat,  and  fat 
into  body  fuel.  The  Eskimo,  having  no  sugar,  yearns 
for  fat,  and  it  comes  with  the  taste  of  sweets. 

The  making  of  native  ice  cream  is  quite  a  task.  I 
watched  the  process  of  making  it  Christmas  day  with 
amused  interest.  The  native  women  must  have  a  mix- 
ture of  oils  from  the  seal,  walrus  and  narwhal.  Wal- 
rus and  seal  blubber  is  frozen,  cut  into  strips,  and 
pounded  with  great  force  so  as  to  break  the  fat  cells. 
This  mass  is  now  placed  in  a  stone  pot  and  heated  to 
the  temperature  of  the  igloo,  when  the  oil  slowly  sepa- 
rates from  the  fibrous  pork-like  mass.  Now,  tallow  from 
the  suet  of  the  reindeer  or  musk  ox  is  secured,  cut  into 
blocks  and  given  by  the  good  housewife  to  her  daugh- 
ters, who  sit  in  the  igloo  industriously  chewing  it  until 
the  fat  cells  are  crushed.  This  masticated  mass  is  placed 
in  a  long  stone  pot  over  the  oil  flame,  and  the  tallow 
reduced  from  it  is  run  into  the  fishy  oil  of  the  walrus 
or  seal  previously  prepared. 

This  forms  the  body  of  native  ice  cream.  For 
flavoring,  the  housewife  has  now  a  variety  from  which 
to  select.  This  usually  consists  of  bits  of  cooked  meat, 
moss  flowers  and  grass.  Anticipating  the  absence  of 
moss  and  grass  in  the  winter,  the  natives,  during  the 
hunting  season,  take  from  the  stomachs  of  reindeer  and 
musk  oxen  which  are  shot,  masses  of  partly  digested 
grass  which  is  preserved  for  winter  use.  This,  which 
has  been  frozen,  is  now  chipped  in  fragments,  thawed, 
and,  with  bits  of  cooked  meats,  is  added  to  the  mixed 
fats.  It  all  forms  a  paste  the  color  of  pistache,  with  oc- 
casional spots  like  crushed  fruit. 


MIDNIGHT  AND  MID-WINTER  139 

The  mixture  is  lowered  to  the  floor  of  the  igloo, 
which,  in  winter,  is  always  below  the  freezing  point,  and 
into  it  is  stirred  snow  water.  The  churned  composite 
gradually  brightens  and  freezes  as  it  is  beaten.  When 
completed,  it  looks  very  much  like  ice  cream,  but  it  has 
the  flavor  of  cod  liver  oil,  with  a  similar  odor.  Never- 
theless, it  has  nutritive  qualities  vastly  superior  to  our 
ice  cream,  and  stomach  pains  rarely  follow  an  engorge- 
ment. 

With  much  glee,  the  natives  finished  their  Christ- 
mas repast  with  this  so-called  delicacy.  For  myself  a 
tremendous  feast  was  prepared,  consisting  of  food  left 
by  the  yacht  and  the  choicest  meat  from  the  caches.  My 
menu  consisted  of  green  turtle  soup,  dried  vegetables, 
caviar  on  toast,  olives,  Alaskan  salmon,  crystallized  po- 
tatoes, reindeer  steak,  buttered  rice,  French  peas,  apri- 
cots, raisins,  corn  bread,  Huntley  and  Palmer  biscuits, 
cheese  and  coffee. 

As  I  sat  eating,  I  thought  with  much  humor  of 
the  curious  combinations  of  caviar  and  reindeer  steak, 
of  the  absurd  contradiction  in  eating  green  turtle  soup 
beyond  the  Arctic  circle.  I  ate  heartily,  with  more 
gusto  than  I  ever  partook  of  delicious  food  in  the  Wal- 
dorf Astoria  in  my  far-away  home  city.  After  dinner 
I  took  a  long  stroll  on  snow  shoes.  As  I  looked  at  the 
star-lamps  swung  in  heaven,  I  thought  of  Broadway, 
with  its  purple-pale  strings  of  lights,  and  its  laughing 
merry-makers  on  this  festive  evening. 

I  did  not,  I  confess,  feel  lonely.  I  seemed  to  be 
getting  something  so  much  more  wholesome,  so  much 
more  genuine  from  the  vast  expanse  of  snow  and  the 
unhidden  heavens  which,  in  New  York,  are  seldom  seen. 


140  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Returning  t<5  the  box-house,  I  ended  Christmas  evening 
with  Edgar  Allen  Poe  and  Shakespeare  as  compan- 
ions. 

The  box-house  in  which  I  lived  was  amply  com- 
fortable. It  did  not  possess  the  luxury  of  a  civilized 
house,  but  in  the  Arctic  it  was  palatial.  The  interior 
fittings  had  changed  somewhat  from  time  to  time,  but 
now  things  were  arranged  in  a  permanent  setting.  The 
little  stove  was  close  to  the  door.  The  floor  measured 
sixteen  feet  in  length  and  twelve  feet  in  width.  On  one 
side  the  empty  boxes  of  the  wall  made  a  pantry,  on  the 
other  side  were  cabinets  of  tools,  and  unfinished  sledge 
and  camp  material. 

With  a  step  we  rose  to  the  next  floor.  On  each 
side  was  a  bunk  resting  on  a  bench.  The  bench  was 
used  as  a  bed,  a  work  bench  and  seat.  The  long  rear 
bench  was  utilized  as  a  sewing  table  for  the  seamstresses 
and  also  for  additional  seating  capacity.  In  the  center 
was  a  table  arranged  around  a  post  which  supported 
the  roof.  Sliding  shelves  from  the  bunks  formed  table 
seats.  A  yacht  lamp  fixed  to  the  post  furnished  ample 
light.  There  was  no  other  furniture.  All  of  our  needs 
were  conveniently  placed  in  the  open  boxes  of  the  wall. 

The  closet  room  therefore  was  unlimited.  In  the 
boxes  near  the  floor,  in  which  things  froze  hard,  the 
perishable  supplies  were  kept.  In  the  next  tier  there 
was  alternate  freezing  and  thawing.  Here  we  stored 
lashings  and  skins  that  had  to  be  kept  moist.  The  tiers 
above,  usually  warm  and  dry  under  the  roof,  were  used 
for  various  purposes.  There,  fresh  meat  in  strips,  dried 
crisp  in  three  days.  Taking  advantage  of  this,  we  had 
made  twelve  hundred  pounds  of  dog  pemmican  from 


THE    CAl'TrUK    OF   A    BEAR 

]:<>r.\i>i\<;   rr  A  HEHD  OF  MUSK  OXEN 


MIDNIGHT  AND  MID- WINTER  141 


alms  meat.  In  the  gable  we  placed  furs  and  instru- 
ments. 

The  temperature  changed  remarkably  as  the  ther- 
mometer was  lifted.  On  the  floor  in  the  lower  boxes, 
it  fell  as  low  as  — 20°.  Under  the  bunks  on  the  floor,  it 
was  usually  — 10°.  The  middle  floor  space  was  above 
the  freezing  point.  At  the  level  of  the  bunk  the  tem- 
perature was  +48°.  At  the  head,  standing,  +70°,  and 
under  the  roof,  — 105°. 

We  contrived  to  keep  perfectly  comfortable.  Our 
feet  and  legs  were  always  dressed  for  low  temperature, 
while  the  other  portions  of  our  body  were  lightly  clad. 
There  was  the  usual  accumulation  of  moisture  ex- 
cept in  the  lower  boxes,  where  it  reinforced  the  founda- 
tion of  the  structure  and  did  no  harm.  From  the  hy- 
gienic standpoint,  with  the  material  at  hand,  we  could 
not  have  improved  the  arrangement.  The  ventilation 
was  by  small  openings,  mostly  along  the  corners,  which 
thus  drew  heat  to  remote  angles.  The  value  of  the  long 
stove  pipe  was  made  evident  by  the  interior  accumulation 
of  ice.  If  we  did  not  remove  the  ice  every  three  or  four 
days  the  draft  was  closed  by  atmospheric  humidity  con- 
densed from  the  draft  drawn  through  the  fire.  From 
within,  the  pipe  was  also  a  splendid  supplementary 
heater,  as  it  led  by  a  circuitous  route  about  the  vestibule 
before  the  open  air  was  reached,  thus  keeping  the  work- 
phop  somewhat  warm.  Two  Eskimo  lamps  gave  the 
added  heat  and  light  for  the  sledge  builders. 

From  Christmas  Day  until  New  Year's  there  were 
daily  feasts  for  the  natives.  I  luxuriated  in  a  long  rest, 
spending  my  time  taking  walks  and  reading.  I  got  a 
sort  of  pleasure  by  proxy  in  watching  the  delight  of  these 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

primal  people  in  real  food,  food  which,  although  to  us 
horribly  unpalatable,  never  gives  indigestion.  This 
period  was  one  of  real  Christmas  rejoicing  in  many  snow 
homes,  and  the  spirit,  although  these  people  had  never 
heard  of  the  Christ  child,  was  more  truly  in  keeping  with 
this  holiday  than  it  often  is  in  lands  where,  in  ostenta- 
tious celebration,  the  real  meaning  is  lost. 

Wandering  from  igloo  to  igloo,  to  extend  greetings 
and  thanks  for  their  faithful  work,  I  was  often  touched 
by  the  sounds  of  thin,  plaintive  voices  in  the  darkness. 
Each  time  a  pang  touched  my  heart,  and  I  remembered 
the  time  when  I  first  heard  my  own  baby  girl's  wee 
voice.  The  little  ones  had  begun  to  arrive.  The  Eski- 
mo stork,  at  igloo  after  igloo,  was  leaving  its  Christmas 
gift. 

For  some  time  before  Christmas,  Cla-you,  easily 
our  best  seamstress,  had  not  come  for  her  assign- 
ment of  sewing.  To  her  had  been  given  the  delicate 
task  of  making  hare  skin  stockings;  but  she  had  lost 
interest  in  needle-work  and  complained  of  not  feeling 
well.  E-ve-lue  (Mrs.  Sinue)  was  completing  her  task. 
Ac-po-di-soa  (the  big  bird),  Cla-you's  husband,  whom 
we  called  Bismark,  had  also  deserted  the  bench  where 
he  had  been  making  sledges.  For  his  absence  there  was 
no  explanation,  for  neither  he  nor  his  wife  had  ever 
shirked  duties  before.  To  solve  the  mystery  I  went  to 
his  igloo  during  Christmas  week.  There  I  first  got 
news  from  the  stork  world.  The  boreal  stork  comes  at 
a  special  season  of  the  year,  usually  a  few  weeks  after 
midnight  when  there  is  little  else  to  interest  the  people. 
This  season  comes  nine  months  after  the  days  of 
budding  passions  in  April,  the  first  Arctic  month  of 


MIDNIGHT  AND  MID-WINTER  143 

the  year  when  all  the  world  is  happy.  In  the  little 
underground  home,  the  anticipated  days  of  the  stork 
visit  were  made  interesting  by  a  long  line  of  prep- 
arations. 

A  prospective  mother  is  busy  as  a  bee  in  a 
charming  effort  to  make  everything  new  for  the 
coming  little  one.  All  things  about  must  be  absolutely 
new  if  possible.  Even  a  new  house  must  be  built.  This 
places  the  work  of  preparation  quite  as  much  on  the 
father  as  on  the  mother.  There  is  in  all  this  a  splendid 
lesson  in  primitive  hygiene. 

To  examine,  first,  the  general  home  environment; 
there  is  a  little  girl  four  years  old  still  taking  nature's 
substitute  for  the  bottle.  She  looks  about  for  a  mean- 
ing of  all  the  changes  about  the  home,  but  does  not 
understand.  You  enter  the  new  house  on  hands  and 
knees  through  an  entrance  twelve  or  fifteen  feet  long, 
crowding  upwards  into  an  ever-open  door  just  large 
enough  to  pass  the  shoulders.  You  rise  into  a  dungeon 
oblong  in  shape.  The  rear  two-thirds  of  this  is  raised 
about  fifteen  inches  and  paved  with  flat-rock.  Upon 
this  the  furs  are  spread  for  a  bed.  The  forward  edge 
forms  a  seat.  The  space  ahead  of  this  is  large  enough 
for  three  people  to  stand  at  once.  On  each  side  there 
is  a  semi-circular  bulge.  In  these  are  placed  the  cres- 
cent-shaped stone  dishes,  in  which  moss  serves  as  a  wick 
to  burn  blubber.  Over  this  blubber  flame,  there  is  a 
long  stone  pot  in  which  snow  is  melted  for  water  and 
meats  are  occasionally  cooked.  Over  this  there  is  a 
drying  rack  for  boots  and  furs.  There  is  no  other 
furniture.  This  house  represents  the  home  of  the  Eski- 
mo family  at  its  best.  Do  what  she  will,  the  best  house- 


144  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

wife  cannot  free  it  of  oil  and  soot.  It  is  not,  indeed,  a 
fit  place  for  the  immaculate  stork  to  come. 

For  months,  the  finest  furs  have  been  gathered  to 
prepare  a  new  suit  for  the  mother.  Slowly  one  article 
of  apparel  after  another  has  been  completed  and  put 
aside.  The  boots,  called  kamik,  are  of  sealskin,  bleached 
to  a  spotless  cream  color.  They  reach  halfway  up 
the  thigh.  The  inner  boot,  called  atesha,  of  soft  caribou 
fur,  is  of  the  same  length;  along  its  upper  edge  there  is 
a  decorative  run  of  white  bear  fur.  The  silky  fur  pads 
protect  the  tender  skin  of  limb  and  foot,  for  no  stock- 
ings are  used.  Above  these,  there  are  dainty  little  pants 
of  white  and  blue  fox,  to  protect  the  body  to  a  point 
under  the  hips,  and  for  protection  above  that  there  is  a 
shirt  of  birdskins  or  aht-tee.  This  is  the  most  delicate  of 
all  garments.  Hundreds  of  little  auk  skins  are  gathered, 
chewed  and  prepared,  and  as  the  night  comes  the  gar- 
ment is  built  blouse-shaped,  with  hood  attached.  It  fits 
loosely.  There  are  no  buttons  or  openings.  For  the 
little  one,  the  hood  is  enlarged  and  extended  down  the 
back,  as  the  pocket  for  its  future  abode.  The  coat  of 
fine  blue  fox  skins,  or  amoyt,  is  of  the  same  shape,  but 
fits  loosely  over  all. 

The  word  amoyt,  or  amoyt  docsoa,  in  its  applica- 
tion, also  covers  the  entire  range  of  the  art  and  func- 
tion of  pregnancy.  This  is  regarded  as  an  institution 
of  the  first  order,  second  only  to  the  art  of  the  chase. 
All  being  ready  for  the  mother,  for  the  baby  only  a 
hood  is  provided,  while  bird-skins  and  grass  are  provided 
to  take  the  place  of  absorbent  cotton.  For  the  first  year, 
the  child  has  absolutely  no  other  wrap  or  cover  but  its 
little  hood. 


MIDNIGHT  AND  MID- WINTER  145 

The  Eskimo  loves  children.  If  the  stork  does  not 
come  in  due  time,  he  is  likely  to  change  his  life  partner. 
For  this  reason  he  looks  forward  to  the  Christmas  sea- 
son with  eager  anticipation.  Seeking  the  wilds  far  and 
near  for  needed  furs,  in  bitter  winds  and  driving  snows, 
he  endures  all  kinds  of  hardships  during  the  night  of 
months  for  the  sake  of  the  expected  child.  Brave,  good 
little  man  of  iron,  he  fears  nothing. 

From  a  near-by  bank  of  hard  snow  he  cuts  blocks 
for  a  new  igloo.  In  darkness  and  wind  he  transports 
them  to  a  point  near  the  house.  When  enough  have 
been  gathered,  he  walls  a  dome  like  a  bee-hive.  The  in- 
terior arrangement  is  like  the  winter  underground  home. 
The  light  is  put  into  it.  By  this  he  can  see  the  open 
cracks  between  snow  blocks.  These  are  filled  in  to  keep 
wind  and  snow  out.  When  all  is  completed,  he  cuts  a 
door  and  enters.  The  bed  of  snow  is  flattened. 

Then  he  seeks  for  miles  about  for  suitable  grass 
to  cover  the  cheerless  ice  floor.  To  get  this  grass,  he 
must  dig  under  fields  of  hardened  snow.  Even  then  he 
is  not  always  rewarded  with  success.  The  sledge,  loaded 
with  frozen  grass,  is  brought  to  the  little  snow  dome. 
The  grass  is  carefully  laid  on  the  bed  of  leveled  snow. 
Over  it  new  reindeer  skins  are  spread.  Now  the  new 
house  of  snow  blocks  in  which  the  stork  is  to  come  is 
ready. 

As  the  stork's  coining  is  announced  the  mother's 
tears  give  the  signal.  She  goes  to  the  new  snowhouse 
alone.  The  father  is  frightened  and  looks  serious.  But 
she  must  tear  herself  away.  With  her  new  garments, 
she  enters  the  dark  chamber  of  the  snowhouse,  strikes 
a  fire,  lights  the  lamp.  The  spotless  walls  of  snow  are 


146  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

cheerful.  The  new  things  about  give  womanly  pride. 
But  life  is  hard  for  her.  A  soul-stirring  battle  follows 
in  that  den  of  ice. 

There  is  a  little  cry.  But  there  is  no  doctor,  no 
nurse,  no  one,  not  a  kindly  hand  to  help.  A  piece  of 
glass  is  used  as  a  surgical  knife.  Then  all  is  over.  There 
is  no  soap,  no  water.  The  methods  of  a  mother  cat  are 
this  mother's.  Then,  in  the  cold,  cheerless  chamber  of 
ice,  she  fondly  examines  the  little  one.  Its  eyes  are  blue, 
but  they  turn  brown  at  once  when  opened.  Its  hair 
is  coal  black,  its  skin  is  golden.  It  is  turned  over  and 
over  in  the  search  for  marks  or  blemishes.  The 
mother's  eyes  run  down  along  the  tiny  spine.  At  its 
end  there  is  a  blue  shield-shaped  blot  like  a  tattoo  mark. 
This  is  the  Eskimo  guarantee  of  a  well-bred  child.  If 
it  is  there,  the  mother  is  happy,  if  not,  there  are  doubts 
of  the  child's  future,  and  of  the  purity  of  the  parents. 
Now  the  father  and  the  grandmother  come.  All  re- 
joice. 

If  misfortune  at  the  time  of  birth  befalls  a  mother, 
as  is  not  infrequent,  the  snow  mound  becomes  her  grave ; 
it  is  not  opened  for  a  long  time. 

After  a  long  sleep,  into  which  the  mother  falls  after 
her  first  joy,  she  awakes,  turns  over,  drinks  some  ice- 
water,  eats  a  little  half-cooked  meat,  and  then,  shaking 
the  frozen  breath  from  the  covers,  she  wraps  herself 
and  her  babe  snugly  in  furs.  Again  she  sleeps,  perhaps 
twenty-four  hours,  seemingly  in  perfect  comfort,  while 
the  life-stilling  winter  winds  drive  over  the  feeble  wall 
of  snow  which  shelters  her  from  the  chilly  death  outside. 

One  day  during  Christmas  week  there  was  a  knock 
at  our  door.  The  proud  Ac-po-di-soa  walked  in,  fol- 


MIDNIGHT  AND  MID-WINTER 

lowed  by  his  smiling  wife,  with  the  sleeping  stork  gift 
on  her  back.  The  child  had  been  born  less  than  five 
days  before.  We  walked  over  and  admired  the  little 
one.  It  suddenly  opened  its  brown  eyes,  screwed  up 
its  little  blubber  nose,  and  wrinkled  its  chin  for  a  cry. 
The  mother  grabbed  her,  plunged  out  of  the  door, 
pulled  the  undressed  infant  out,  and  in  the  wind  and 
cold  served  the  little  one's  want. 

New  Year's  Day  came  starlit  and  cold.  The  year 
had  dawned  in  which  I  was  to  essay  the  task  to  which 
I  had  set  myself,  the  year  which  would  mean  success  or 
failure  to  me.  The  past  year  had  been  gracious  and 
bountiful,  so,  in  celebration,  Francke  prepared  a  feast 
of  which  we  both  ate  to  gluttonous  repletion.  This 
consisted  of  ox-tail  soup,  creamed  boneless  cod,  pickles, 
scrambled  duck  eggs  with  chipped  smoked  beef,  roast 
eider-duck,  fresh  biscuits,  crystallized  potatoes,  creamed 
onions,  Bayo  beans  and  bacon,  Malaga  grapes, 
(canned),  peach-pie,  blanc-mange,  raisin  cake,  Nabisco 
biscuits  and  steaming  chocolate. 

The  day  was  spent  in  making  calls  among  the 
Eskimos.  In  the  evening  several  families  were  given 
a  feast  which  was  followed  by  songs  and  dances.  This 
hilarity  was  protracted  to  the  early  hours  of  morning 
and  ended  in  an  epidemic  of  night  hysteria.  When  thus 
afflicted  the  victims  dance  and  sing  and  fall  into  a  trance, 
the  combination  of  symptoms  resembling  insanity. 

In  taking  account  of  our  stock  we  found  that  our 
baking  powder  was  about  exhausted.  This  was  sad 
news,  for  a  breakfast  of  fresh  biscuits,  butter  and  coffee 
was  one  of  the  few  delights  that  remained  for  me  in 
life.  We  had  bicarbonate  of  soda,  but  no  cream  of 


148  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

tartar.    I  wondered  whether  we  could  not  substitute  for 
cream  of  tartar  some  other  substance. 

Curious  experiments  followed.  The  juice  of  sauer- 
kraut was  tried  with  good  results.  But  the  flavor,  as  a 
steady  breakfast  food,  was  not  desirable.  Francke  had 
fermented  raisins  with  which  to  make  wine.  As  a  wine 
it  was  a  failure,  but  as  a  fruit  acid  it  enabled  us  to  make 
soda  biscuits  with  a  new  and  delicate  flavor.  Milk,  we 
found,  would  also  ferment.  From  the  unsweetened 
condensed  milk,  biscuits  were  made  that  would  please 
the  palate  of  any  epicure.  My  breakfast  pleasure  there- 
fore was  still  assured  for  many  days  to  come. 


EN  ROUTE  FOR  THE  POLE 


THE  CAMPAIGN  OPENS — LAST  WEEKS  OF  THE  POLAR 
NIGHT — ADVANCE  PARTIES  SENT  OUT — AWAITING 
THE  DAWN 


THE  START  WITH  SUNRISE  OF  1908 

Two  weeks  of  final  tests  and  re-examination  of 
clothing,  sledges  and  general  equipment  followed  the 
New  Year's  festivities.  On  January  14  there  was 
almost  an  hour  of  feeble  twilight  at  midday.  The  moon 
offered  light  enough  to  travel.  Now  we  were  finally 
ready  to  fire  the  first  guns  of  the  Polar  battle.  Scouts 
were  outside,  waiting  for  the  signal  to  proceed.  They 
were  going,  not  only  to  examine  the  ice  field  for  the 
main  advance,  but  to  offer  succor  to  a  shipwrecked  crew, 
which  the  natives  believed  was  at  Cape  Sabine. 

The  smoke  of  a  ship  had  been  seen  late  in  the  fall, 
and  much  wood  from  a  wrecked  ship  had  been  found. 
The  pack  was,  therefore,  loaded  with  expedition  sup- 
plies, with  instructions  to  offer  help  to  anyone  in  want 
that  might  be  found. 

I  had  just  finished  a  note  to  be  left  at  Cape 
Sabine,  telling  of  our  headquarters,  our  caches  and 
our  willingness  to  give  assistance.  This  was  handed  to 
Koo-loo-ting-wah,  standing  before  his  restless  dogs, 


150  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

whip  in  hand,  as  were  his  three  companions,  who  volun- 
teered as  scouts.  They  jumped  on  the  sledges,  and  soon 
the  dogs  were  rushing  toward  the  Polar  pack  of  Smith 
Sound. 

It  was  a  beautiful  day.  A  fold  of  the  curtain  of 
night  had  been  lifted  for  a  brief  spell.  A  strong  mixed 
light,  without  shadows,  rested  on  the  snow.  It  changed 
in  quality  and  color  with  the  changing  mystery  of  the 
aurora.  One  might  call  it  blue,  or  purple,  or  violet,  or 
no  color  at  all,  according  to  the  color  perception  of  the 
observer. 

In  the  south  the  heavens  glowed  with  the  heralds 
of  the  advancing  sun.  The  light  was  exaggerated  by 
the  blink  of  the  ice  over  which  the  light  was  sent,  for  the 
brightness  of  the  heavens  was  out  of  proportion  to  its 
illuminating  effect  upon  the  surface  snows.  In  the 
north,  the  half -spent  moon  dispelled  the  usual  blackness 
Poleward,  while  the  zenith  was  lighted  with  stars  of  the 
first  and  second  magnitude. 

The  temperature  was  — 41°  F.  The  weather  was 
perfectly  calm — all  that  could  be  expected  for  the  im- 
portant event  of  opening  the  campaign. 

In  the  course  of  a  few  hours  the  cheerful  light 
faded,  the  snows  darkened  to  earthy  fields,  and  out  of 
the  north  came  a  smoky  tempest.  The  snow  soon  piled 
up  in  tremendous  drifts,  making  it  difficult  to  leave  the 
house  without  climbing  new  hills.  The  dogs  tied  about 
were  buried  in  snow.  Only  the  light  passing  through 
the  membrane  of  intestines,  which  was  spread  over  the 
ports  to  make  windows  for  the  native  houses,  relieved 
the  fierce  blackness. 

The  run  to  Cape  Sabine,  under  fine  conditions,  was 


EN  ROUTE  FOR  THE  POLE  151 

about  forty  miles,  and  could  be  made  in  one  day,  but 
Smith  Sound  seldom  offers  a  fair  chance.  Insufficient 
light,  impossible  winds  or  ice  make  the  crossing  haz- 
ardous at  best.  The  Eskimos  cross  every  year,  but 
they  are  out  so  much  after  bears  that  they  have  a  good 
knowledge  of  the  ice  before  they  start  to  reach  the  other 
shores. 

Coming  from  the  north,  with  a  low  temperature 
and  blowing  snow,  the  wind  would  not  only  stop  our 
scouts,  but  force  the  ice  south,  leaving  open  spaces  of 
water.  A  resulting  disruption  of  the  pack  might  greatly 
delay  our  start  with  heavy  sledges.  Furthermore, 
there  was  real  danger  at  hand  for  the  advance.  If  the 
party  had  been  composed  of  white  men  there  surely 
would  have  been  a  calamity.  But  the  Eskimo 
approaches  the  ventures  of  the  wild  with  splendid  endur- 
ance. Moreover,  he  has  a  weather  intelligence  which 
seldom  finds  him  unprepared. 

At  midnight  of  the  second  night  the  party  returned. 
They  were  none  the  worse  for  the  storm.  The  main 
intent  of  their  mission  had  failed.  The  storm  had  forced 
them  into  snow  embankments,  and  before  it  was  quite 
spent  a  bear  began  to  nose  about  their  shelter  places. 
The  dogs  were  so  buried  with  drift  that  they  were  riot  on 
watch  until  the  bear  had  destroyed  much  of  their  food. 
Then  their  mad  voices  aroused  the  Eskimos. 

As  they  dug  out  of  their  shelter,  the  bear  took  a  big 
walrus  leg  and  walked  off,  man-like,  holding  the  meat  in 
his  forepaws.  In  their  haste  to  free  the  dogs,  they  cut 
their  harness  to  pieces,  for  snow  and  ice  cemented  the 
creatures.  Oo-tah  ran  out  in  the  excitement  to  head 
off  the  bear — not  to  make  an  attack,  but  simply  to  stop 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Ms  progress.  The  bear  dropped  the  meat  and  grabbed 
Oo-tah  by  the  seat  of  his  trousers.  The  dogs,  fortu- 
nately, came  along  in  time  to  save  Oo-tah's  life,  but  he 
had  received  a  severe  leg  wound,  which  required  imme- 
diate surgical  attention. 

The  bear  was  captured,  and  with  loads  of  bear  meat 
and  the  wounded  scout  the  party  returned  as  quickly  as 
possible.  In  the  retreat  it  was  noticed  that  the  ice  was 
very  much  broken. 

In  the  wreck  of  an  Arctic  storm  there  is  always  a 
subsequent  profit  for  someone.  The  snow  becomes 
crusted  and  hardened,  making  sledge  travel  easy.  The 
breaking  of  the  ice,  which  was  a  great  hindrance  to  our 
advance,  offered  open  water  for  walrus  and  bear  hunt- 
ing. At  this  time  we  went  to  Serwahdingwah  for  the 
last  chase.  Some  of  the  Eskimos  took  their  families, 
so  Annoatok  became  depopulated  for  a  while.  But  on 
our  return,  visitors  came  in  numbers  too  numerous  for 
our  comfort. 

Dogs  and  skins,  bargained  for  earlier  in  the  season, 
were  now  delivered.  Each  corps  of  excursionists  re- 
quired some  attention,  for  they  had  done  noble  work  for 
the  expedition.  We  gave  them  dinners  and  allowed 
them  to  sit  about  our  stove  with  picture-books  in  hand. 

Another  storm  came,  with  still  more  violent  force, 
a  week  later.  This  caused  us  much  anxiety,  for  we 
counted  on  our  people  being  scattered  on  the  ice  along 
the  shores  of  Cape  Alexander.  In  a  storm  this  would 
probably  be  swept  from  the  land  and  carried  seaward. 
There  was  nothing  that  could  be  done  except  wait  for 
news.  Messengers  of  trouble  were  not  long  in  reaching 
headquarters  after  the  storm.  None  of  the  men  were 


EN  ROUTE  FOR  THE  POLE  153 

on  the  ice,  but  a  hurricane  from  the  land  had  wrecked 
the  camps. 

Our  men  suffered  little,  but  many  of  the  natives  in 
neighboring  villages  were  left  without  clothing  or  sleep- 
ing furs.  In  the  rush  of  the  storm  the  ice  left  the  land, 
and  the  snowhouses  were  swept  into  the  sea.  Men  and 
women,  without  clothing,  barely  escaped  with  their  lives. 
Two  of  our  new  sledges,  some  dogs,  and  three  suits  of 
winter  furs  were  lost.  A  rescue  party  with  furs  had  to 
be  sent  to  the  destitute  people.  Fortunately,  our  people 
were  well  supplied  with  bed-furs,  out  of  which  new 
suits  were  made. 

Sledge  loads  of  our  furs  were  also  coming  north, 
and  instructions  were  sent  to  use  these  for  the  urgent 
needs  of  the  sufferers.  Other  things  were  sent  from 
Annoatok,  with  returning  excursionists,  and  in  the 
course  of  a  week  the  damage  was  replaced.  But  the 
loss  was  all  on  the  expedition,  and  deprived  many  of  the 
men  in  their  northern  journey  of  suitable  sleeping- furs. 
Walruses  were  obtained  after  the  storm,  and  the  natives 
now  had  no  fear  of  a  famine  of  meat  or  fat. 

By  the  end  of  January  most  of  the  natives  had  re- 
turned, and  new  preparations  were  made  for  a  second 
effort  to  cross  the  Sound.  Francke  asked  to  join  the 
party,  and  prepared  for  his  first  camp  outing.  Four 
sledges  were  loaded  with  two  hundred  pounds  each  of 
expedition  advance  supplies.  Four  good  drivers  volun- 
teered to  move  the  sledges  to  the  American  side. 

The  light  had  gradually  brightened,  and  the  storms 
passed  off  and  left  a  keen,  cold  air,  which  was  as  clear  as 
crystal.  But  at  best  the  light  was  still  feeble,  and  could 
be  used  for  only  about  four  hours  of  each  twenty-four. 


154  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

If,  however,  the  sky  remained  clear,  the  moon  and  stars 
would  furnish  enough  illumination  for  a  full  day's  travel. 
There  was  a  little  flush  of  color  in  the  southern  skies, 
and  the  snows  were  a  pale  purple  as  the  sledges  groaned 
in  their  rush  over  the  frosty  surface. 

The  second  party  started  off  as  auspiciously  as  the 
first,  and  news  of  its  luck  was  eagerly  awaited. 

They  reached  Cape  Sabine  after  a  long  run  of 
twenty  hours,  making  a  considerable  detour  to  the  north. 
The  ice  offered  good  traveling,  but  the  cold  was  bitter, 
the  temperature  being  — 52°  F.,  with  light,  extremely 
humid  and  piercing  winds. 

Along  the  land  and  within  the  bays  the  snow  was 
found  to  be  deep,  and  a  bitter  wind  came  from  the  west. 
Two  of  the  party  could  not  be  persuaded  to  go  farther, 
but  Francke,  with  two  companions,  pushed  on  for  an- 
other day  akmg  the  shore  to  Cape  Veile.  Beyond,  the 
snow  was  too  deep  to  proceed.  The  supplies  were  cached 
in  a  snowhouse,  while  those  at  Cape  Sabine  were  left  in 
the  old  camp.  The  party  returned  at  the  end  of  four 
days  with  their  object  accomplished.  Nothing  was  seen 
of  the  rumored  shipwrecked  crew. 

The  next  party,  of  eight  sledges,  led  by  Es-se-you, 
Kud-la,  and  Me-tek,  started  on  February  5.  The 
object  was  to  carry  advance  supplies  to  the  head  of 
Flagler  Bay,  and  hunt  musk  ox  to  feed  the  sledge  teams 
;as  they  moved  overland.  We  were  to  meet  this  party  at 
an  appointed  place  in  the  bay. 

The  light  was  still  too  uncertain  to  risk  the  fortunes 
of  the  entire  force.  With  a  hundred  dogs,  a  delay  of  a 
day  would  be  an  expensive  loss,  for  if  fed  upon  the  care- 
fully guarded  food  of  the  advance  stores,  a  rapid  reduc- 


EN  ROUTE  FOR  THE  POLE  155 

tion  in  supplies  would  follow,  which  could  not  be  re- 
placed, even  if  abundant  game  were  secured  later.  It 
was,  therefore,  desirajble  to  await  the  rising  sun. 

We  made  our  last  arrangements,  fastened  our  last 
packs,  and  waited  impatiently  for  the  sunrise,  here  at 
this  northernmost  outpost  of  human  life,  just  seven  hun- 
dred miles  from  the  Pole.  And  this  was  the  problem 
that  now  insistently  and  definitely  confronted  us  after 
the  months  of  planning  and  preparation:  Seven  hun- 
dred miles  of  advance,  almost  a  thousand  miles  as  our 
route  was  planned;  one  thousand  miles  of  return;  two 
thousand  miles  in  all ;  allowing  for  detours  ( for  the  line 
to  be  followed  could  not  be  precisely  straight),  more 
than  two  thousand  miles  of  struggling  travel  across  icy 
and  unknown  and  uninhabitable  wastes  of  moving  ice. 

On  the  morning  of  February  19,  1908,  I  started  on 
my  trip  to  the  North  Pole. 

Early,  as  the  first  real  day  of  the  year  dawned, 
eleven  sledges  were  brought  to  the  door  of  our  box- 
house  and  lashed  with  supplies  for  the  boreal  dash. 
There  were  four  thousand  pounds  of  supplies  for  use  on 
the  Polar  sea,  and  two  thousands  pounds  of  walrus  skin 
and  fat  for  use  before  securing  the  fresh  game  we  antici- 
pated. The  eleven  sledges  were  to  be  driven  by 
Francke,  nine  Eskimos,  and  myself.  They  were  drawn 
by  one  hundred  and  three  dogs,  each  in  prime  condi- 
tion. The  dogs  had  been  abundantly  fed  with  walrus 
skin  and  meat  for  several  weeks,  and  would  now  be  fed 
only  every  second  day  on  fresh  supplies. 

My  heart  was  high.  I  was  about  to  start  on  the 
quest  which  had  inspired  me  for  many  years!  The 
natives  were  naturally  excited.  The  dogs  caught  the 


156  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

contagious  enthusiasm,  and  barked  joyously.  At  eight 
o'clock  in  the  morning  our  whips  snapped,  the  spans  of 
dog  teams  leaped  forward,  and  we,  were  off. 

My  Polar  quest  had  begun! 

Most  of  the  tribe  had  seemed  willing  to  go  with 
me,  and  to  take  all  their  dogs,  but  the  men  and  the  dogs 
finally  selected  were  the  pick  of  the  lot.  All  were  in 
superb  physical  condition,  this  matter  of  condition 
being  something  that  I  had  carefully  looked  out  for  dur- 
ing the  winter  months.  I  regard  this  as  having  been 
highly  advantageous  to  me,  that  I  have  always  been  able 
to  win  the  friendship  and  confidence  of  the  Eskimos ;  for 
thus  I  found  them  extremely  ready  to  follow  my  advice 
and  instructions,  and  to  do  in  general  anything  I  desired. 
That  I  could  speak  Eskimo  fairly  well — well  enough  to 
hold  ordinary  conversations — was  also  a  strong  asset  in 
my  favor. 

When  we  started,  a  few  stars  were  seen  between 
thin  clouds,  but  the  light  was  good.  A  soft  wind  came 
from  the  south;  the  temperature  was  — 36°  F.  The 
Greenland  ice-cap  was  outlined;  a  belt  of  orange  in  the 
south  heralded  the  rising  sun.  The  snow  still  retained 
the  purple  of  twilight.  The  ice  was  covered  with  about 
three  inches  of  soft  snow  over  a  hard  crust,  which  made 
speed  difficult.  Before  noon  the  sky  was  gray,  but  the 
light  remained  good  enough  for  traveling  until  4  P.  M. 
A  course  was  made  about  northwest,  because  a  more 
direct  line  was  still  impractical. 

A  water  sky  to  the  west  and  south  denoted  open 
water.  At  3  P.  M.  we  ran  into  bear  tracks,  and  the 
sledges  bounced  along  as  if  empty.  The  tracks  were 
making  a  good  course  for  us,  so  the  dogs  were 


EN  ROUTE  FOR  THE  POLE  157 

encouraged.  By  four  o'clock  the  feeble  light  made  it 
dangerous  to  proceed.  Two  hunters  still  followed  the 
bear  tracks,  while  the  others  built  three  snowhouses  for 
camp.  Nothing  was  seen  of  the  bears. 

The  dogs  were  tied  to  holes  cut  in  the  ice,  and  we 
crept  into  our  snow-mounds,  tired,  hungry  and  sleepy. 
The^  night  was  extremely  uncomfortable — the  first 
nights  from  camp  always  are. 

The  next  day  brought  a  still'air  with  a  temperature 
of  —42°  F.,  and  brilliant  light  at  eight  o'clock.  We  had 
made  twenty  miles  through  the  air-line  distance  from 
Annoatok,  and  Cape  Sabine  was  but  thirty  miles  away. 
We  had  been  forced  so  far'north  that  we  still  had  thirty 
miles  before  us  to  the  Cape.  The  dogs,  however,  were  in 
better  trim,  and  we  had  no  doubt  about  reaching  the 
off -shores  for  the  next  camp.  We  followed  the  edge  of 
ice  which  had  been  made  in  a  wide  open  space  in  Decem- 
ber. Here  the  traveling  was  fairly  level,  but  above  was 
a  hopeless  jungle  of  mountains  and  ridges  of  ice.  We 
made  about  three  miles  an  hour,  and  were  able  to  ride 
occasionally. 

At  noon  of  February  20th  we  stopped,  and  coffee 
was  served  from  our  ever-hot  coffee  box.  A  can  had 
been  placed  in  a  box,  and  so  protected  by  reindeer  skins 
that  the  heat  was  retained  for  twelve  hours  during  the 
worst  weather.  This  proved  a  great  luxury. 

While  we  sat  regaling  ourselves,  a  great  ball  of  fire 
rose  along  the  icy  horizon.  Our  hearts  were  glad.  The 
weather  was  bitterly  cold;  the  temperature  was  51°  F.: 
but  the  sun  had  risen ;  the  long  night  was  at  end.  There 
was  little  else  to  mark  the  glory  of  sunrise.  The  light 
was  no  brighter  than  it  had  been  for  two  hours.  The 


158  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

sky  remained  a  purple  blue,  with  a  slight  grayness  in  the 
south,  darkening  toward  the  horizon.  The  snows  were 
purple,  with  just  a  few  dashes  of  red  in  the  road  before 
us.  This  unpretentious  burst  of  the  sun  opened  our 
spirits  to  new  delights.  Even  the  dogs  sat  in  graceful 
rows  and  sounded  a  chorus  of  welcome  to  the  coming  of 
the  day. 

Although  Cape  Sabine,  on  February  20,  was  in 
sight,  we  still  headed  for  Bache  Peninsula.  Im- 
possible ice  and  open  water  pushed  us  farther  and  far- 
ther north.  It  was  three  o'clock  before  the  Cape  was 
seen  over  the  dogs'  tails.  Soon  after  four  the  light 
failed,  the  land  colored  to  purple  and  gold  toward  the 
rim  of  the  horizon,  and  we  were  left  to  guess  the  direc- 
tion of  our  course.  But  Eskimos  are  somewhat  better 
than  Yankees  at  guessing,  for  we  got  into  no  troubles 
until  9  P.  M.,  when  we  tried  to  scale  the  rafted  ice 
against  Cape  Sabine.  With  only  the  camp  equipment 
and  dog  food,  the  dogs  crept  up  and  down  in  the  black 
hills  of  ice,  while  we  followed  like  mountain-sheep. 

Here  had  been  the  camp  of  the  ill-fated  Greely 
expedition.  It  recurred  to  me  that  it  was  a  curious  whim 
of  fate  that  this  ill-starred  camp  of  famine  and  death,  in 
earlier  days,  should  have  marked  the  very  outset  of  our 
modern  effort  to  reach  the  Pole.  But  later  we  were  to 
learn  that  under  similar  conditions  a  modern  expedition 
can  meet  the  same  fate  as  that  of  the  Lady  Franklin 
Bay  Expedition. 

We  turned  about,  took  the  advance  supplies,  and 
picked  a  course  through  Rice  Strait,  to  avoid  the  rough 
ice  northward.  Here  the  surface  was  good,  but  a  light 
wind,  with  a  temperature  of  — 52°  F.,  came  with  great 


EN  ROUTE  FOR  THE  POLE  159 

bitterness.  The  dogs  refused  to  face  the  wirxd,  and  re- 
quired someone  to  lead  the  way.  The  men  buried  their 
faces  in  the  fur  mittens,  leaned  on  the  upstanders,  and 
ran  along. 

Passing  Cape  Rutherford  on  February  22,  we  fol- 
lowed the  coast.  Here  the  wind  came  from  the  right, 
caught  the  tip  of  the  nose,  burning  with  a  bleaching 
effect,  which,  in  camp  later,  turned  black.  At  Cape 
Veile  the  cache  igloo  was  sighted,  and  there  camp  was 
pitched. 

In  the  morning  the  minimum  thermometer  regis- 
tered — 58°  F.  We  were  evidently  passing  from  the 
storms  and  open  water  of  Smith  Sound,  from  warm, 
moist  air  to  a  still,  dry  climate,  with  very  low  tempera- 
ture. The  day  opened  beautifully  with  a  glow  of  rose 
to  the  south,  which  colored  the  snows  in  warm  tones. 
At  noon  the  sun  showed  half  of  its  face  over  the  cliffs 
as  we  crossed  the  bay  and:  sought  better  ice  along 
Bache  Peninsula.  That  night  we  camped  near  the 
Weyprecht  Islands.  The  day,  although  bright,  proved 
severe,  for  most  of  the  natives  had  frostbites  about  the 
face.  Along  Bache  Peninsula  we  saw  hares  staring  at 
us.  Four  were  secured  for  our  evening  meal.  In  the 
very  low  temperature  of  — 64°  F.  the  hunters  suffered 
from  injuries  like  burns,  due  to  the  blistering  cold  metal 
of  their  guns. 

Dog  food  had  also  to  be  prepared.  In  efforts  to 
divide  the  walrus  skin,  two  hatchets  were  broken.  The 
Eskimo  dog  is  a  tough  creature,  but  he  cannot  be  ex- 
pected to  eat  food  which  breaks  an  axe.  Petroleum  and 
alcohol  were  used  liberally,  and  during  the  night  the 
skin  was  sufficiently  softened  by  the  heat  to  be  cut  with 


160  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

the  hatchets.  This  skin  seems  to  be  good  food  for  the 
dogs.  It  is  about  one  inch  thick,  and  contains  little 
water,  the  skin  fibre  being  a  kind  of  condensed  nutri- 
ment, small  quantities  of  which  satisfy  the  dogs.  It 
digests  slowly,  and  therefore  has  lasting  qualities. 

The  lamps,  burning  at  full  force,  made  the  igloos 
comfortable.  The  temperature  fell  to  — 68°  F.  It  was 
the  first  satisfying  sleep  of  the  journey  for  me.  The 
economy  of  the  blue  fire  stoves  is  beyond  conception. 
Burning  but  three  pounds  of  oil  all  night,  the  almost 
liquid  air  was  reduced  to  a  normal  temperature  of  freez- 
ing point. 

Francke  used  alcohol  stoves,  with  a  double  con- 
sumption of  fuel.  The  natives,  in  their  three  igloos, 
used  the  copper  lamp,  shaped  after  the  stone  devices, 
but  they  did  no  cooking. 

In  the  morning  of  the  23d  we  heard  sounds  to  the 
south,  which  at  first  we  thought  to  be  walrus.  But  after 
a  time  the  noise  was  interpreted  as  that  of  the  dogs  of 
the  advance  party.  They  were  camped  a  few  miles 
beyond,  and  came  to  our  igloos  at  breakfast.  One  musk 
ox  and  eleven  hares  had  been  secured.  The  valley  had 
been  thoroughly  hunted,  but  no  other  game  was  sighted. 

The  ground  was  nearly  bare,  and  made  sledge 
travel  impossible.  They  were  bound  for  Annoatok  at 
once.  This  was  sad  news  for  us.  We  had  counted  on 
game  with  which  to  feed  the  dog  train  en  route  to  the 
Polar  sea.  If  animals  were  not  secured,  our  project 
would  fail  at  the  very  start,  and  this  route  would  be  im- 
possible. To  push  overland  rapidly  to  the  west  coast 
was  our  only  chance,  but  the  report  of  insufficient  snow 
seemed  to  forbid  this.  Something,  however,  must  be 


EN  ROUTE  FOR  THE  POLE  161 

cried.  We  could  not  give  up  without  a  stronger  fight. 
The  strong  probability  of  our  failing  to  find  musk  ox, 
and  extending  the  expedition  for  another  year,  over 
another  route,  made  it  necessary  to  send  Francke  back 
to  headquarters  to  guard  our  supplies.  There  was  no 
objection  to  the  return  of  most  of  the  other  party,  but 
we  took  their  best  dogs  and  sledges,  with  some  exchange 
of  drivers. 

With  this  change  in  the  arrangements,  and  the  ad- 
vance supplies  from  Cape  Sabine  and  Cape  Viele,  each 
sledge  now  carried  eight  hundred  pounds.  Beyond,  in 
Flagler  Bay,  the  ice  luckily  became  smooth  and  almost 
free  of  snow.  An  increased  number  of  dogs,  with  good 
traveling,  enabled  us  to  make  satisfactory  progress, 
despite  the  steadily  falling  temperature. 

The  head  of  Flagler  Bay  was  reached  late  at  night, 
after  an  exhausting  march  of  twenty-five  miles.  A  hard 
wind,  with  a  temperature  of  — 60°  F.,  had  almost  para- 
lyzed the  dogs,  and  the  men  were  kept  alive  only  by 
running  with  the  dogs.  Comfortable  houses  were  built 
and  preparations  made  for  a  day  of  rest.  On  the  mor- 
row we  aimed  to  explore  the  land  for  an  auspicious  route. 
Many  new  frostbites  were  again  noted  in  camp.  One  of 
the  dogs  died  of  the  cold. 

The  party  was  by  no  means  discouraged,  however. 
We  were  as  enthusiastic  as  soldiers  on  the  eve  of  a 
longed-for  battle.  The  reduced  numbers  of  the  return 
party  gave  us  extra  rations  to  use  in  times  of  need,  and 
the  land  did  not  seem  as  hopeless  as  pictured  by  the 
returning  natives.  A  cache  was  made  here  of  needful 
things  for  use  on  the  return.  Other  things,  which  we 
had  found  useless,  were  also  left  here. 


EXPLORING  A  NEW  PASS  OVER  ACPOHON 

FROM  THE  ATLANTIC  WATERS  AT  FLAGLER  BAY  TO  THE 

PACIFIC  WATERS  AT  BAY  FIORD THE  MECCA  OF  THE 

MUSK  OX — BATTLES  WITH  THE  BOVINE  MONSTERS  OF 
THE  ARCTIC — SUNRISE   AND  THE  GLORY  OF   SUNSET 

XI 

BREAKING  A  TRAIL  BEYOND  THE  HAUNTS  OF  MAN 

Early  in  the  morning  of  February  25  the  dogs  were 
spanned  to  sledges  with  heavy  loads,  and  we  pushed  into 
the  valley  of  mystery  ahead.  Our  purpose  was  to  cross 
the  inland  ice  and  descend  into  Cannon  Bay.  The 
spread  of  the  rush  of  glacial  waters  in  summer  had  dug 
out  a  wide  central  plain,  now  imperfectly  covered  with 
ice  and  snow.  Over  this  we  lined  a  trail. 

On  each  side  of  us  were  gradual  slopes  rising  to 
cliffs,  above  which  I  noted  the  blue  wall  of  the  over- 
land sea  of  ice,  at  an  altitude  of  about  two  thousand  feet. 
Nowhere  did  this  offer  a  safe  slope  for  an  ascent.  We 
now  explored  the  picturesque  valley,  for  I  knew  that 
our  only  hope  was  to  push  overland  to  Bay  Fiord.  The 
easy  slopes  were  enlivened  with  darting,  downy  hares. 
Some  sat  motionless,  with  their  long  ears  erect,  while 
they  drank  the  first  golden  air  of  sunrise  and  watched 
the  coming  of  new  life.  Others  danced  about  in  frisky 
play. 


EXPLORING  NEW  PASS  OVER  ACPOHON       163 

As  we  pushed  along,  the  ascent  of  the  slope  was 
gradual.  The  necessity  for  crossing  from  side  to  side 
to  find  ice  or  snow  lengthened  our  journey.  Only  the 
partially  bare  earth  gave  us  trouble.  The  temperature 
was  — 62°  F.,  but  there  was  no  wind.  The  upper  slopes 
glittered  with  bright  sunshine.  Winding  with  a  stream, 
we  advanced  twenty  miles.  Beyond  there  was  the 
same  general  topography.  The  valley  looked  like  a 
pass.  Clouds  of  a  different  kind  were  seen  through  the 
gorges.  At  various  places  we  noted  old  musk  ox  paths. 
I  knew  that  where  game  trails  are  well  marked  on  moun- 
tains one  is  certain  to  find  a  good  crossing.  This  rule  is 
equally  good  in  the  Arctic  as  elsewhere.  At  any  rate, 
there  was  no  alternative.  The  tortures  of  the  top  had  to 
be  risked.  Pushing  onward,  we  found  no  fresh  signs  of 
musk  ox.  A  few  bear  tracks  were  seen,  and  a  white  fox 
followed  us  to  camp.  We  shot  sixteen  hares,  and  for  the 
evening  meal  unlimited  quantities  of  savory  hare  meat 
made  an  appetizing  broth. 

On  the  day  following,  everything  was  advanced  to 
this  point.  A  prolonged  search  for  musk  ox  was  made, 
with  negative  results. 

On  the  morning  of  the  27th,  full  loads  were  taken 
on  our  sledges.  With  slow  progress  we  advanced  on  the 
rising  bed  of  the  stream,  the  valley  moved,  and  the  river 
ice  was  found  in  one  channel,  making  better  travel. 
Hare  and  fox  tracks  increased  in  number.  The  side 
slopes  were  grassy,  and  mostly  swept  bare  of  snow  by 
strong  winter  winds.  Sand  dunes  and  gravel  lines  were 
also  piled  up,  while  huge  drifts  of  pressed  snow  indi- 
cated a  dangerous  atmospheric  agitation.  Here,  I 
knew,  were  excellent  feeding  grounds  for  musk  ox  and 


164  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

caribou.  But  a  careful  scrutiny  gave  no  results  for  a 
long  time. 

To  us  the  musk  ox  was  now  of  vital  importance. 
The  shorter  way,  over  Schley  Land  and  northward 
through  Nansen  Sound,  was  possible  only  if  game  in 
abundance  was  secured  en  route.  If  the  product  of 
the  chase  gave  us  no  reward,  then  our  Polar  venture  was 
doomed  at  the  outset. 

One  day,  with  a  temperature  of  — 100°  below  the 
freezing  point,  and  with  a  light  but  sharp  Arctic  wind 
driving  needles  of  frost  to  the  very  bone,  we  searched 
the  rising  slopes  of  ice-capped  lands  in  the  hope  of 
spotting  life. 

For  three  days  the  dogs  had  not  been  fed.  They 
sniffed  the  air,  searched  the  horizon,  and  ranged  the 
wilds  with  all  the  eagerness  of  their  wolf  progenitors. 
The  hare  and  the  fox  were  aroused  from  their  winter's 
sleep,  but  such  game  was  not  what  we  now  desired. 
Only  meat  and  fat  in  heaps  could  satisfy  the  wants  of 
over  a  hundred  empty  stomachs. 

After  a  hard  pull,  ascending  miniature,  ice-cov- 
ered hills,  winding  about  big,  polished  boulders,  we 
entered  a  wider  section  of  the  narrow  gorge-like  valley. 
Here  the  silurian  rocks  had  broken  down,  and  by  the 
influence  of  glacier  streams  and  glaciers,  now  receding, 
a  good  deal  of  rolling,  grass-covered  land  spread  from 
cliff  to  cliff.  Strong  winter  gales  had  bared  the  ground. 
We  sat  down  to  rest.  The  dogs  did  likewise. 

All  searched  the  new  lands  with  eager  eyes.  The 
dog  noses  pointed  to  a  series  of  steep  slopes  to  the 
north.  They  were  scenting  something,  but  were  too 
tired  to  display  the  usual  animation  of  the  chase.  Soon 


EXPLORING  NEW  PASS  OVER  ACPOHON       165 

we  detected  three  dark,  moving  objects  on  a  snowy  sun- 
flushed  hill,  under  a  huge  cliff,  about  a  thousand  feet 
above  us.  " Ah-ming-makl"  shouted  E-tuk-i-shook. 
The  dogs  jumped;  the  men  grasped  glasses;  in  a  second 
the  sledge  train  was  in  disorder. 

Fifty  dogs  were  hitched  to  three  sledges.  Rushing 
up  three  different  gulches,  the  sledges,  with  tumbling 
human  forms  as  freight,  advanced  to  battle.  The  musk 
oxen,  with  heads  pointed  to  the  attacking  forces,  quietly 
awaited  the  onrush. 

Within  an  hour  three  huge,  fat  carcasses  were  down 
in  the  river  bed.  A  temporary  camp  was  made,  and 
before  the  meat  froze  most  of  it  had  passed  palates 
tantalized  by  many  days  of  gastronomic  want. 

Continuing  our  course,  we  crossed  the  divide  in  a 
storm.  Beyond,  in  a  canyon,  the  wind  was  more  uncom- 
fortable than  in  the  open.  Something  must  be  done. 
We  could  not  long  breathe  that  maddening  air,  weighted 
by  frost  and  thickened  by  snows.  The  snow-bank  gave 
no  shelter  whatever,  and  a  rush  of  snow  came  over, 
which  quickly  buried  the  investigators.  But  it  was  our 
only  hope. 

"Dig  a  hole,"  said  Koo-loo-ting-wah. 

Now,  to  try  to  dig  a  hole  without  a  shovel,  and  with 
snow  coming  more  rapidly  than  any  power  of  man 
could  remeve,  seemed  a  waste  of  needed  vital  force. 
But  I  had  faith  in  the  intelligence  of  my  savage  com- 
panions, and  ordered  all  hands  to  work.  They  gathered 
at  one  corner  of  the  bank,  and  began  to  talk  and  shout, 
while  I  allowed  myself  to  be  buried  in  a  pocket  of  the 
cliffs  to  keep  my  tender  skin  from  turning  to  ice.  Every 
few  minutes  someone  came  along  to  see  if  I  was  safe. 


166  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

The  igloo  was  progressing.  Two  men  were  now 
inside.  In  the  course  of  another  hour  they  reported 
four  men  inside ;  in  another  hour  seven  men  were  inside, 
and  the  others  were  piling  up  the  blocks,  cut  with  knives 
from  the  interior.  A  kind  of  vestibule  was  made  to 
allow  the  wind  to  shoot  over  the  entrance.  Inside,  the 
men  were  sweating. 

Soon  afterward  I  was  told  that  the  igloo  was  com- 
pleted. I  lost  no  time  in  seeking  its  shelter.  A  square 
hole  had  been  cut,  large  enough  for  the  entire  party  if 
packed  like  sardines.  Our  fur  clothing  was  removed, 
and  beaten  with  sticks  and  stones. 

The  lamps  sang  cheerily  of  steaming  musk  ox 
steaks.  The  dogs  were  brought  into  the  canyon.  A 
more  comfortable  night  was  impossible.  We  were  fifty 
feet  under  the  snow.  The  noise  of  the  driving  storm 
was  lost.  The  blinding  drift  about  the  entrance  was 
effectually  shut  out  by  a  block  of  snow  as  a  door.  Two 
holes  afforded  ventilation,  and  the  tremendous  differ- 
ence between  the  exterior  and  the  interior  air  assured 
a  circulation. 

When  we  emerged  in  the  morning  the  sky  was 
clear.  A  light  wind  came  from  the  west,  with  a  tem- 
perature of  — 78°  F.  Two  dogs  had  frozen  during  the 
storm.  All  were  buried  in  the  edge  of  a  drift  that  was 
piled  fifteen  feet.  An  exploration  of  the  canyon  showed 
other  falls  and  boulders  impossible  for  sledge  travel. 

A  trail  was  picked  over  the  hills  to  the  side.  The 
day  was  severe.  How  we  escaped  broken  legs  and 
smashed  sleds  was  miraculous.  But  somehow,  in  our 
plunges  down  the  avalanches,  we  always  landed  in  a 
soft  bed  of  snow.  We  advanced  about  ten  miles,  and 


EXPLORING  NEW  PASS  OVER  ACPOHON       167 

made  a  descent  of  five  hundred  feet,  first  camping  upon 
a  glacial  lake. 

The  temperature  now  was  — 79°  F.,  and  although 
there  were  about  nine  hours  of  good  light,  including  twi- 
light, we  had  continued  our  efforts  too  long,  and  were 
forced  to  build  igloos  by  moonlight.  Glad  were  we, 
indeed,  when  the  candle  was  placed  in  the  dome  of  snow, 
to  show  the  last  cracks  to  be  stuffed. 

In  the  searchlight  of  the  frigid  dawn  I  noticed  that 
our  advance  was  blocked  by  a  large  glacier,  which  tum- 
bled barriers  of  ice  boulders  into  the  only  available  line 
for  a  path.  A  way  would  have  to  be  cut  into  this  bar- 
rier of  icebergs  for  about  a  mile.  This  required  the  full 
energy  of  all  the  men  for  the  day.  I  took  advantage  of 
the  halt  to  explore  the  country  through  which  we  were 
forcing  a  pass.  The  valley  was  cut  by  ancient  glaciers 
and  more  modern  creeks  along  the  meeting  line  of  two 
distinct  geological  formations.  To  the  north  were 
silurian  and  cambro-silurian  rocks;  to  the  south  were 
great  archgean  cliffs. 

With  the  camera,  the  field-glass,  and  other  instru- 
ments in  the  sack,  I  climbed  into  a  gorge  and  rose  to  the 
level  of  the  mountains  of  the  northern  slopes.  The 
ground  was  here  absolutely  destitute  of  vegetation,  and 
only  old  musk  ox  trails  indicated  living  creatures.  The 
snow  had  all  been  swept  into  the  ditches  of  the  low- 
lands. Climbing  over  frost-sharpened  stones,  I  found 
footing  difficult. 

The  average  height  of  the  mountains  proved  to  be 
nineteen  hundred  feet.  To  the  northeast  there  was  land 
extending  a  few  miles  further,  with  a  gradual  rising 
slope.  Beyond  was  the  blue  edge  of  the  inland  ice.  To 


168  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

the  northwest,  the  land  continued  in  rolling  hills,  beyond 
which  no  land-ice  was  seen.  The  cliffs  to  the  south  were 
of  about  the  same  height,  but  they  were  fitted  to  the 
crest  with  an  ice-cap.  The  overflow  of  perpetual  snows 
descended  into  the  gorges,  making  five  overhanging 
glaciers. 

The  first  was  at  the  divide,  furnishing  in  summer 
the  waters  which  started  the  vigorous  stream  to  the 
Atlantic  slopes.  It  was  a  huge  stream  of  ice,  about  a 
mile  wide,  and  it  is  marked  by  giant  cliffs,  separated  by 
wide  gaps,  indicating  the  roughness  of  the  surface  over 
which  it  pushes  its  frozen  height.  To  the  stream  to 
which  it  gives  birth,  flowing  eastward  from  the  divide, 
I  will  give  the  name  of  Schley  River,  in  honor  of  Rear- 
Admiral  Schley. 

The  stream  starting  westward  from  the  divide, 
through  picturesque  rocks,  tumbles  in  icy  falls  into  a 
huge  canyon,  down  to  the  Pacific  waters  at  Bay  Fiord. 
To  this  I  will  give,  in  honor  of  General  A.  W.  Greely, 
the  name  Greely  River. 

The  second  and  third  glaciers  were  overhanging 
masses  about  a  half-mile  wide,  which  gave  volume  in 
summer  time  to  Greely  River. 

The  fourth  was  a  powerful  glacier,  with  a  discharg- 
ing face  of  blue  three  miles  long,  closing  up  a  valley 
and  damming  up  a  lake  about  four  miles  long  and  one 
mile  wide.  The  lake  was  beyond  the  most  precipitous 
of  the  descending  slopes.  The  upper  cliffs  of  the  walled 
valley  to  Flagler  Bay  were  still  visible,  while  to  the  west 
was  seen  a  line  of  mountains  and  cliffs  which  marked  the 
head  of  Bay  Fiord,  under  which  was  seen  the  ice  cover- 
ing the  first  water  of  the  Pacific  upon  which  our  future 


EXPLORING  NEW  PASS  OVER  ACPOHON       169 

fortunes  would  be  told.  To  this  sea  level  there  was  an 
easy  descent  of  four  hundred  feet  on  the  river  ice  and 
snowdrifts,  making,  with  good  luck,  a  day's  run  of 
twenty  miles. 

Returning,  at  camp  I  was  informed  that  not  only 
had  a  trail  been  cut,  but  many  of  the  sledges  had  been 
advanced  to  the  good  ice  beyond.  Two  of  the  sledges, 
however,  had  been  badly  broken,  and  must  be  mended 
at  dawn  before  starting. 

The  day  was  beautiful.  For  the  first  time  I  felt 
the  heat  of  the  sun.  It  came  through  the  thick  fur  of 
my  shoulders  with  the  tenderness  of  a  warm  human 
hand.  The  mere  thought  of  the  genial  sunbeams 
brought  a  glow  of  healthful  warmth,  but  at  the  same 
time  the  thermometer  was  very  low,  — 78%°  F.  One's 
sense  of  cold,  under  normal  conditions,  is  a  correct  in- 
strument in  its  bearing  upon  animal  functions,  but  as  an 
instrument  of  physics  it  makes  an  unreliable  thermom- 
eter. If  I  had  been  asked  to  guess  the  temperature  of 
the  day  I  should  have  placed  it  at  — 25°  F. 

The  night  air  had  just  a  smart  of  bitterness.  The 
igloo  failed  to  become  warm,  so  we  fed  our  internal  fires 
liberally  with  warming  courses,  coming  in  easy  stages. 
We  partook  of  superheated  coffee,  thickened  with  sugar, 
and  biscuits,  and  later  took  butter  chopped  in  squares, 
which  was  eaten  as  cheese  with  musk  ox  meat  chopped 
by  our  axes  into  splinters.  Delicious  hare  loins  and 
hams,  cooked  in  pea  soup,  served  as  dessert. 

The  amount  of  sugar  and  fat  which  we  now  con- 
sumed was  quite  remarkable.  Fortunately,  during  the 
journey  to  the  edge  of  the  Polar  sea,  there  was  no 
urgent  limit  to  transportation,  and  we  were  well  sup- 


170  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

plied  with  the  luxury  of  sugar  and  civilized  foods,  most 
of  which  later  were  to  be  abandoned. 

In  this  very  low  temperature  I  found  considerable 
difficulty  in  jotting  down  the  brief  notes  of  our  day's 
doings.  The  paper  was  so  cold  that  the  pencil  barely 
left  a  mark.  A  few  moments  had  to  be  spent  warming 
each  page  and  pencil  before  beginning  to  write.  With 
the  same  operation,  the  fingers  were  also  sufficiently 
warmed  to  hold  the  pencil.  All  had  to  be  done  by  the 
light  and  heat  of  a  candle. 

To  economize  fuel,  the  fires  later  were  extinguished 
before  retiring  to  sleep.  In  the  morning  we  were  buried 
in  the  frost  falling  from  our  own  breath. 

It  was  difficult  to  work  at  dawn  with  fur-covered 
hands;  but  the  Eskimo  can  do  much  with  his  glove- 
fitting  mitten.  The  broken  sledges  were  soon  repaired. 
After  tumbling  over  irregular  ice  along  the  face  of  the 
glacier,  the  river  offered  a  splendid  highway  over  which 
the  dogs  galloped  with  remarkable  speed.  We  rode 
until  cold  compelled  exercise.  The  stream  descended 
among  picturesque  hills,  but  the  most  careful  scrutiny 
found  no  sign  of  life  except  the  ever-present  musk  ox 
trails  of  seasons  gone  by. 

As  we  neared  the  sea  line,  near  the  mouth  of  the 
river,  we  began  to  see  a  few  fresh  tracks  of  hare  and 
musk  ox.  Passing  out  on  the  south  of  Bay  Fiord,  we 
noted  bear  and  wolf  tracks.  Then  the  eyes  of  the  hunter 
and  the  dog  rolled  with  eager  anticipation. 

The  sun  flushed  the  skies  in  flaming  colors  as  it  was 
about  to  sink  behind  a  run  of  high  peaks.  The  western 
sky  burned  with  gold,  the  ice  flashed  with  crimson  inlets, 
but  the  heat  was  very  feeble.  The  temperature  was 


EXPLORING  NEW  PASS  OVER  ACPOHON       171 

— 72°  F.  We  had  already  gone  twenty-five  miles,  and 
were  looking  forward  to  a  point  about  ten  miles  beyond 
as  the  next  camping  place,  when  all  my  companions, 
seemingly  at  once,  espied  a  herd  of  musk  ox  on  the  sky 
line  of  a  whale-backed  mountain  to  the  north. 

The  distance  was  about  three  miles,  but  the  eagle 
eyes  of  the  natives  detected  the  black  spots. 

We  searched  the  gorge  with  our  glasses.  Suddenly 
one  of  the  Eskimos  cried  out  in  a  joyous  tone:  "Ah- 
ming-ma!  Ah-ming-ma!" 

I  could  detect  only  some  dark  specks  on  the  snow, 
which  looked  like  a  hundred  others  that  I  knew  to  be 
rocks.  I  levelled  my  glasses  on  the  whale-backed  moun- 
tain at  which  the  Eskimo  was  staring,  and,  sure  enough, 
there  were  three  musk  oxen  on  a  steep  snow  slope. 
They  seemed  to  be  digging  up  the  winter  snow  fields 
to  get  "scrub"  willows.  They  were  not  only  three  miles 
away,  but  at  an  altitude  of  perhaps  a  thousand  feet 
above  us. 

The  cumbersome  loads  were  quickly  pitched  from 
three  sledges.  Rifles  and  knives  were  securely  fastened. 
In  a  few  moments  the  long  lashes  snapped,  and  away 
we  rushed,  with  two  men  on  each  of  the  sledges  and 
with  double  teams  of  twenty  dogs. 

The  dogs  galloped  at  a  pace  which  made  the  sledges 
bound  like  rubber  balls  over  irregularities  of  rocks,  slip- 
pery ice,  and  hard-crusted  snow,  and  our  hold  tightened 
on  the  hickory  in  the  effort  to  keep  our  places.  It  dis- 
turbed the  dogs  not  at  all  whether  they  were  on  rock  or 
snow,  or  whether  the  sledge  rested  on  runners  or  turned 
spirally;  but  it  made  considerable  difference  to  us,  and 
we  lost  much  energy  in  the  constant  efforts  to  avoid 


172  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

somersaults.  We  did  not  dare  release  our  grip  for  a 
moment,  for  to  do  so  would  have  meant  painful  bump- 
ing and  torn  clothes,  as  well  as  being  left  behind  in  the 
chase. 

It  took  but  a  brief  time  to  cover  the  three  miles. 
We  made  our  final  advance  by  three  separate  ravines, 
and  for  a  time  the  musk  oxen  were  out  of  sight.  When 
we  again  saw  them  they  had  not  taken  the  alarm,  nor 
did  they  until  we  were  ready  to  attack  them  from  three 
separate  points. 

All  but  five  dogs  from  each  sledge  were  now  freed 
from  harness.  They  darted  toward  the  oxen  with  fierce 
speed. 

The  oxen  tried  to  escape  through  a  ravine,  but  it 
was  too  late.  The  dogs  were  on  every  side  of  them,  and 
all  the  oxen  could  do  was  to  grunt  fiercely  and  jump 
into  a  bunch,  with  tails  together  and  heads  directed  at 
the  enemy.  There  were  seven  musk  oxen  in  all,  and  they 
tried  to  keep  the  dogs  scattered  at  a  safe  distance. 

The  dogs 'would  rush  up  to  within  a  few  feet,  show- 
ing their  teeth  and  uttering  wolfish  sounds,  and  every 
now  and  then  an  ox  would  rush  out  from  its  circle,  with 
head  down,  in  an  effort  to  strike  the  dogs ;  but  the  dogs 
were  always  too  quick  to  be  caught  by  the  savage  thrust, 
and  each  time  the  ox,  in  its  retreat,  would  feel  canine 
fangs  closing  on  its  haunches. 

After  a  few  such  efforts,  the  bulls,  with  lowered 
horns,  merely  held  to  the  position,  while  the  dogs,  not 
daring  actually  to  attack  under  such  circumstances,  sat 
in  a  circle  and  sent  up  blood-chilling  howls.  Meanwhile, 
the  Eskimos  and  myself  were  hurrying  up. 

The  strife  was  soon  over.    I  snapped  my  camera  at 


\ 


CAPPING    TO    EAT    ANT)    TAKE    OBSERVATIONS 
ON    AGAIN  ! 


EXPLORING  NEW  PASS  OVER  ACPOHON       173 

an  old  bull  which  at  that  moment  broke  through  the 
dogs  and,  followed  by  a  group  of  them,  was  driven 
madly  over  a  cliff  in  a  plunge  of  five  thousand  feet.  The 
other  oxen  were  soon  killed  by  the  hunters. 

The  sun  settled  under  mountains  of  ice,  and  the 
purple  twilight  rapidly  thickened.  It  was  very  cold. 
The  breath  of  each  man  came  like  jets  of  steam  from  a 
kettle.  The  temperature  was  now  — 81  °F.  No  time 
could  be  lost  in  dressing  the  game.  But  the  Eskimos 
were  equal  to  the  task,  and  showed  such  skill  as  only 
Indians  possess. 

While  this  was  being  done  by  my  companions,  I 
strolled  about  to  note  the  ear-marks  of  the  home  of  the 
musk  ox.  The  mountain  was  in  line  of  the  sweep  of  the 
winds,  and  was  bared  of  snows.  Here  were  grass, 
mosses,  and  creeping  willows  in  abundance,  descending 
into  the  gullies.  I  found  fossil-stumps  of  large  trees 
and  bits  of  lignite  coal.  The  land  in  pre-glacial  times 
had  evidently  supported  a  vigorous  vegetation ;  but  now 
the  general  aspect  offered  a  scene  of  frosty  hopelessness. 
Still,  in  this  desolation  of  snowy  wastes,  nature  had  sup- 
plied creatures  with  food  in  their  hard  pressure  of  life. 

Fox  and  wolf  tracks  were  everywhere,  while  on 
every  little  eminence  sat  an  Arctic  hare,  evincing  ear- 
upraised  surprise  at  our  appearance.  With  the  glasses 
I  noted  on  neighboring  hills  three  other  herds  of  musk 
ox.  This  I  did  not  tell  the  hunters,  for  they  would  not 
have  rested  until  all  were  secured.  Living  in  a  land  of 
cold  and  hunger,  the  Eskimo  is  insatiable  for  game.  We 
had  as  much  meat  as  we  could  possibly  use  for  the  next 
few  days,  and  it  was  much  easier  to  fill  up,  and  secure 
more  when  we  needed  it,  than  now  to  carry  almost  im- 


174  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

possible  loads.  •  In  a  remarkably  short  time  the  skins 
were  removed  and  the  meat  was  boned  and  cut  in  small 
strips  in  such  a  way  that  the  axe  would  break  it  when 
frozen.  Neatly  wrapped  in  skins,  the  loads  did  not 
seem  large. 

Selecting  a  few  choice  bits  for  later  use,  the  bal- 
ance was  separated  and  allowed  to  cool.  I  looked  at  the 
enormous  quantity  of  meat,  and  wondered  how  it  could 
be  transported  to  camp,  but  no  such  thought  troubled 
the  Eskimos.  Piece  after  piece  went  down  the  canine 
throats  with  a  gulp.  No  energy  was  wasted  in  masti- 
cation. With  a  drop  of  the  jaws  and  a  twist  of  the  neck, 
,the  task  of  eating  was  finished  and  the  stomach  began  to 
spread.  The  dogs  had  not  yet  reached  their  limit  when 
the  snow  was  cleared  of  its  weight  of  dressed  meat  and 
a  canine  wrangle  began  for  the  possession  of  the  cleaned 
bones. 

With  but  little  meat  on  the  sledges,  we  began  the 
descent,  but  the  spirit  of  the  upward  rush  was  lost. 
The  dogs,  too  full  to  run,  simply  rolled  down  the  slopes, 
and  we  pushed  the  sledges  ourselves.  The  ox  that  had 
made  the  death  plunge  was  picked  up  and  taken  as 
reserve  meat.  It  was  midnight  before  camp  was 
pitched.  The  moon  burned  with  a  cheerful  glow.  The 
air  was  filled  with  liquid  frost,  but  there  was  no  wind 
and  consequently  no  suffering  from  cold. 

Two  comfortable  snowhouses  were  built,  and  in 
them  our  feasts  rivalled  the  canine  indulgence.  Thus 
was  experienced  the  greatest  joy  of  savage  life  in  boreal 
wilds — the  hunt  of  the  musk  ox,  with  the  advantage  of 
the  complex  cunning  gathered  by  forgotten  ages.  The 
balance  of  the  meat  left  after  our  feast  was  buried,  with 


EXPLORING  NEW  PASS  OVER  ACPOHON       175 

the  protecting  skins,  in  the  snow.  On  opening  the  meat 
on  the  following  morning,  it  was  still  warm,  although 
the  minimum  thermometer  registered  — 80°  F.  for  the 
night. 

A  few  minutes  before  midday,  on  our  next  march, 
the  sledge  train  halted.  We  sat  on  the  packs,  and, 
with  eyes  turned  southward,  waited.  Even  an  Eskimo 
has  an  eye  for  color  and  a  soul  for  beauty.  To  us  there 
appeared  a  play  of  suppressed  light  and  bleached  color 
tints,  as  though  in  harmony  with  bars  of  music,  which 
inspired  my  companions  to  shouts  of  joy. 

Slowly  and  majestically  the  golden  orb  lifted.  The 
dogs  responded  in  low,  far-reaching  calls.  The  Eskimos 
greeted  the  day  god  with  savage  chants.  The  sun,  a 
flushed  crimson  ball,  edged  along  the  wintry  outline  of 
the  mountains'  purplish  snowy  glitter.  The  pack  was 
suddenly  screened  by  a  moving  sheet  of  ever-changing 
color,  wherein  every  possible  continuation  of  purple  and 
gold  merged  with  rainbow  hues. 

Soon  the  dyes  changed  to  blue,  and  eventually  the 
sky  was  fired  by  flames  of  red.  Then,  slowly,  the  great 
blazing  globe  sank  into  seas  of  fire-flushed  ice.  The 
snowy  mountains  about  glowed  with  warm  cheer.  The 
ice  cooled  again  to  purple,  and  again  to  blue,  and  then 
a  winter  blackness  closed  the  eye  to  color  and  the  soul 
to  joy. 


IN  GAME  TRAILS  TO  LAND'S  END 

SVERDRUP'S  NEW  WONDERLAND — FEASTING  ON  GAME  EN 
ROUTE  TO  SVARTEVOEG FIRST  SHADOW  OBSERVA- 
TIONS— FIGHTS  WITH  WOLVES  AND  BEARS THE  JOYS 

OF  ZERO'S  LOWEST — THRESHOLD  OF  THE  UNKNOWN 

XII 

SHORES  OF  THE  CIRCUMPOLAR  SEA 

March  2  was  bright  and  clear  and  still.  The  ice 
was  smooth,  with  just  snow  enough  to  prevent  the  dogs 
cutting  their  feet.  The  heavy  sledges  bounded  along 
easily,  but  the  dogs  were  too  full  of  meat  to  step  a  lively 
pace.  The  temperature  was  — 79°  F.  We  found  it 
comfortable  to  walk  along  behind  the  upstanders  of  the 
sledges.  Some  fresh  bear  tracks  were  crossed.  These 
denoted  that  bears  had  advanced  along  the  coast  on  an 
exploring  tour,  much  as  we  aimed  to  do.  Scenting 
these  tracks,  the  dogs  forgot  their  distended  stomachs, 
and  braced  into  the  harness  with  full  pulling  force.  We 
were  still  able  to  keep  pace  by  running.  Hard  exer- 
cise brought  no  perspiration. 

After  passing  the  last  land  point,  we  noted  four 
herds  of  musk  oxen.  The  natives  were  eager  to  embark 
for  the  chase.  I  tried  to  dissuade  them,  but,  had  we  not 
crossed  the  bear  trail,  no  word  of  mine  would  have  kept 
them  from  another  chase  of  the  musk  ox. 


IN  GAME  TRAILS  TO  LAND'S   END  177 

Long  after  sunset,  as  we  were  about  to  camp,  a  bear 
was  sighted  advancing  on  us  behind  a  line  of  hummocks. 
The  light  was  already  feeble.  It  was  the  work  of  but  a 
minute  to  throw  our  things  on  the  ice  and  start  the  teams 
on  the  scent  of  the  bear.  But  this  bear  was  thin  and 
hungry.  He  gave  us  a  lively  chase.  His  advance  was 
checked,  however,  as  our  rush  began,  and  he  spread  his 
huge  paws  into  a  step  which  outdistanced  our  dogs. 
The  chase  was  continued  on  the  ice  for  about  three  miles. 
Then  bruin,  with  sublime  intelligence,  took  to  the  land 
and  the  steep  slopes,  leading  us  over  hilly,  bare  ground, 
rocks,  and  soft  snows.  He  gained  the  top  of  the  tall 
cliffs  while  we  were  still  groping  in  the  darkness  among 
the  rocks  at  the  base,  a  thousand  feet  below. 

The  sledges  were  now  left,  and  the  dogs  freed. 
They  flew  up  a  gully  in  which  the  bear  tracks  guided  an 
easy  path.  In  a  short  time  their  satisfying  howls  told 
of  the  bear's  captivity.  He  had  taken  a  position  on 
a  table-rock,  which  was  difficult  for  the  dogs  to  climb. 
At  an  easy  distance  from  this  rock  were  steep  slopes  of 
snow.  One  after  another,  the  dogs  came  tumbling 
down  these  slopes.  With  but  a  slight  cuff  of  his  paw, 
the  bear  could  toss  .the  attacking  dogs  over  dizzy  heights. 
His  position  was  impregnable  to  the  dogs,  but,  thus 
perched,  he  was  a  splendid  mark  for  E-tuk-i-shook.  That 
doughty  huntsman  raised  his  gun,  and,  following  a  shot, 
the  bear  rolled  down  the  same  slopes  on  which  he  had 
hurled  the  dogs.  To  his  carcass  a  span  of  strong  dogs 
were  soon  hitched,  and  it  was  hauled  down  to  the  sea 
level.  Quickly  dressed  and  distributed,  the  bear  was 
only  a  teasing  mouthful  to  the  ever-hungry  dogs. 

It  was  nearly  midnight  before  we  returned  to  our 


178  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

sledge  packs.  The  work  of  building  the  houses  was 
rendered  difficult  by  the  failing  moon  and  the  very  low 
temperature.  The  lowest  temperature  of  the  season, 
— 83°,  was  reached  this  night. 

The  sun  rose  in  the  morning  of  March  3  with  warm 
colors,  painting  the  crystal  wrorld  surrounding  us  with 
gorgeous  tints  of  rose  and  old  gold.  It  was  odd  that 
in  the  glare  of  this  enrapturing  glory  we  should  note  the 
coldest  day  of  the  year. 

With  the  returning  sun  in  the  Arctic  comes  the 
most  frigid  season.  The  light  is  strongly  purple,  and 
one  is  tempted  to  ascribe  to  the  genial  rays  a  heating 
influence  which  is  as  yet  absent,  owing  to  their  slant. 
The  night-darkened  surfaces  prevent  the  new  sun- 
beams from  disseminating  any  considerable  heat,  and  the 
steadily  falling  temperature  indicates  that  the  crust  of 
the  earth,  as  a  result  of  its  long  desertion  by  the  sun  in 
winter,  is  still  unchecked  in  its  cooling.  Because  of  the 
persistence  of  terrestrial  radiation,  we.  have  the  coldest 
weather  of  the  year  with  the  ascending  sun. 

It  is  a  fortunate  provision  of  nature  that  these  icy 
days  of  the  ascending  sun  are  usually  accompanied  by  a 
breathless  stillness.  When  wind  and  storms  come,  the 
temperature  quickly  rises.  It  is  doubtful  if  any  form 
of  life  could  withstand  a  storm  at  — 80°  F.  A  quiet 
charm  comes  with  this  eye-opening  period.  The  spirits 
rise  with  indescribable  gladness,  and,  although  the  mer- 
cury is  frozen,  the  body,  when  properly  dressed,  is  per- 
fectly comfortable.  The  soft  light  of  purple  and  gold, 
or  of  lilac  and  rose,  on  the  snowy  slopes,  dispels  the 
chronic  gloom  of  the  long  night,  while  the  tonic  of  a 
brightening  air  of  frost  returns  the  flush  to  the  pale 


IN  GAME  TRAILS   TO  LAND'S   END  179 

cheeks.  The  stillness  adds  a  charm,  with  which  the 
imagination  plays.  It  is  not  the-  music  of  silence,  nor 
the  gold  solitude  of  summer,  nor  the  deathlike  stillness 
of  the  winter  blackness.  It  is  the  stillness  of  zero's 
lowest,  which  has  a  beauty  of  its  own. 

The  ice  pinnacles  are  lined  with  hoar  frost,  on 
which  there  is  a  play  of  rainbow  colors.  The  tread  of 
one's  feet  is  muffled  by  feathery  beds  of  snow.  The 
mountains,  raised  by  the  new  glow  of  light  or  outlined 
by  colored  shadows,  stand  against  the  brightened 
heavens  in  sculptured  magnificence. 

The  bear  admires  his  shadow,  the  fox  peeps  from 
behind  his  bushy  tail,  devising  a  new  eult,  for  his  art  of 
night  will  soon  be  a  thing  of  the  past.  The  hare  sits, 
with  forelegs  bent  reverently,  as  if  offering  prayers  of 
gratitude.  The  musk  ox  stands  in  the  brightest  sun,  with 
his  beautiful  coat  of  black  and  blue,  and  absorbs  the  first 
heaven-given  sun  bath,  and  man  soars  high  in  dreams  of 
happiness. 

Shadows  always  attract  the  eye  of  primitive  people 
and  children.  In  a  world  such  as  the  one  we  were  invad- 
ing, with  little  to  rest  the  eye  from  perpetual  glitter,  they 
were  to  become  doubly  interesting.  When  we  first 
began  observing  our  shadows,  on  March  3,  I  did  not 
dream  that  a  thing  so  simple  could  rise  to  the  dignity 
of  a  proof  of  the  Polar  conquest.  But,  since  then,  I  have 
come  to  the  conclusion  that,  if  a  proof  of  this  much-dis- 
cussed problem  is  at  all  possible,  it  is  in  the  corroborative 
evidence  of  just  such  little  things  as  shadows. 

Accordingly,  I  have  examined  every  note  and  im- 
pression bearing  on  natural  phenomena  en  route. 

To  us,  in  our  daily  marches  from  Bay  Fiord,  the 


180  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

shadow  became  a  thing  of  considerable  interest  and  im- 
portance. The  Eskimo  soul  is  something  apart  from 
the  body.  The  native  believes  it  follows  in  the  shadow. 
For  this  reason,  stormy,  sunless  days  are  gloomy  times 
to  the  natives,  for  the  presence  of  the  soul  is  then  not  in 
evidence.  The  night  has  the  same  effect,  although  the 
moon  often  throws  a  clear-cut  shadow.  The  native  be- 
lieves the  soul  at  times  wanders  from  the  body.  When 
it  does  this,  the  many  rival  spirits,  which  in  their  system 
of  beliefs  tenant  the  body,  get  into  all  sorts  of  trouble. 

Every  person,  and  every  animal,  has  not  only  a  soul 
which  guards  its  destiny,  but  every  part  of  the  body  has 
an  individual  spirit — the  arm,  the  leg,  the  nose,  the  eye, 
the  ear,  and  every  other  conceivable  part  of  the  anatomy, 
with  a  peculiar  individuality,  throbs  with  a  separate  life. 
The  separate,  wandering  soul  in  the  shadow  is  the  guid- 
ing influence. 

Furthermore,  there  is  no  such  conception  as  an 
absolutely  inanimate  thing.  The  land,  the  sea,  the  air, 
ice,  and  snow,  have  great  individual  spirits  that  ever 
engage  in  battle  with  each  other.  Even  mountains,  val- 
leys, rocks,  icebergs,  wood,  iron,  fire — all  have  spirits. 
All  of  this  gives  them  a  keen  interest  in  shadows  in  an 
otherwise  desert  of  gloom  and  death. 

Their  entire  religious  creed  would  require  a  long 
time  to  work  out.  Even  that  part  of  it  which  is  repre- 
sented by  the  shadow  is  quite  beyond  me.  As  I  ob- 
served in  our  following  marches  toward  Svartevoeg, 
their  keen  eyes  detect  in  shadows  incidents  and  messages 
of  life,  histories  that  would  fill  volumes.  The  shadow  is 
long  or  short,  clear-cut  or  vague,  dark  or  light,  blue  or 
purple,  violet  or  black.  Each  phase  of  it  has  a  special 


IN  GAME  TRAILS   TO  LAND'S   END  181 

significance.  It  presages  luck  or  ill-luck  on  the  chase, 
sickness  and  death  in  the  future,  the  presence  or  unrest 
of  the  souls  of  parted  friends.  Even  the  souls  of  the 
living  sometimes  get  mixed.  Then  there  is  love  or  in- 
trigue. All  the  passions  of  wild  life  can  be  read  from 
the  shadows.  The  most  pathetic  shadows  had  been  the 
vague,  ghastly  streaks  of  black  that  followed  the  body 
about  a  week  before  sunset  in  October.  At  that  time 
all  the  Arctic  world  is  sad,  and  tears  come  easily. 

The  shadow  does  not  quickly  come  back  with  the 
returning  sun.  Continuous  storms  so  screen  the  sun- 
beams that  only  a  vague,  diffused  light  reaches  the  long 
night-blackened  snows.  When  the  joy  of  seeing  the 
first  shadows  exploded  among  my  companions  I  did  not 
know  just  what  intoxication  infected  the  camp.  With 
full  stomachs  of  newly  acquired  musk  ox  loins, .we  had 
slept.  Suddenly  the  Mm.  burst  through  a  maze  of  burn- 
ing clouds  and  madef our  snow  palace  glow  with  electric 
darts.  The  temperature  was  very  low.  Only  half- 
dressed,  the  men  rushed  out,  dancing  with  joy. 

Their  shadows  were  long,  sharp-cut,  and  of  a  deep, 
purple  blue.  They  danced  with  them.  This  brought 
them  back  to  the  normal  life  of  Eskimo  hilarity.  Then 
followed  the  pleasures  of  the  thrill  of  the  sunny  days  of 
crystal  air  and  blinding  sparkle  during  never-to-be 
forgotten  days  of  the  enervating  chill  of  zero's  lowest  at 
-83°  F. 

In  the  northward  progress,  for  a  long  time  the 
shadows  did  not  perceptibly  shorten  or  brighten  to  my 
eyes.  The  natives,  however,  on  our  subsequent  marches, 
got  from  these  shadows  a  never-ending  variety  of  topics 
to  talk  about.  They  foretold  storms,  located  game,  and 


182  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

read  the  story  of  respective  home  entanglements  of  the 
Adamless  Eden  which  we  had  left  far  away  on  the 
Greenland  shore. 

Our  bear  adventures  took  us  on  an  advance  trail 
over  which  progress  was  easy.  Beyond,  the  snow  in- 
creased rapidly  in  depth  with  every  mile.  Snowshoes 
were  lashed  to  our  feet  for  the  first  mile.  We  halted  in 
our  march  at  noon,  attacked  suddenly  by  five  wolves. 
The  rifles  were  prepared  for  defense.  No  shots  were  to 
be  fired,  however,  unless  active  battle  was  commenced. 
The  creatures  at  close  range  were  slightly  cream-colored, 
with  a  little  gray  along  their  backs,  but  at  a  greater  dis- 
tance they  seemed  white.  They  came  from  the  moun- 
tains, with  a  chilling,  hungry  howl  that  brought  shivers. 
The  dogs  were  interested,  but  made  no  offer  to  give 
chase. 

The  wolves  passed  the  advancing  sledges  at  a  dis- 
tance, and  gathered  'about  the  rear  sledge,  which  was 
separated  from  the  train.  The  driver  turned  his  team 
to  help  in  the  fight.  As  the  sledges  neared,  the  teams 
were  stopped,  the  wolves  sat  down  and  delivered  a  mad- 
dening chorus  of  chagrin.  The  dogs  were  restless,  but 
only  wiggled  their  tails.  The  men  stood  still,  with 
rifles  pointed.  The  chorus  ended.  The  battle  was  de- 
clared off.  Seeing  that  they  were  outnumbered,  the 
howling  creatures  turned  and  dashed  up  the  snowy 
slopes,  from  which  they  had  come,  with  a  storming  rush. 
The  train  was  lined  up,  and  through  the  deep  snow  we 
plowed  westward. 

In  two  difficult  marches  we  reached  Eureka 
Sound. 

Wolves  continued  on  our  trail  nearly  every  day 


IN  GAME  TRAILS  TO  LAND'S   END  183 

along  the  west  coast  of  Acpohon,  and  also  along  North 
Devon. 

In  the  extreme  North,  the  wolf,  like  the  fox,  is  pure 
white,  with  black  points  to  the  ears,  and  spots  over  the 
eyes.  In  the  regions  farther  south  his  fur  is  -slightly 
gray.  In  size,  he  is  slightly  larger  than  the  Eskimo 
dog,  his  body  longer  and  thinner,  and  he  travels  with  his 
tail  down.  Like  the  bear,  he  is  a  ceaseless  wanderer 
during  all  seasons  of  the  year. 

In  winter,  wolves  gather  in  groups  of  six  or  eight, 
and  attack  musk  ox,  or  anything  in  their  line  of  march. 
But  in  summer  they  travel  in  pairs,  and  become  scaven- 
gers. The  wolf  is  alert  in  estimating  the  number  of  his 
combatants  and  their  fighting  qualities.  Men  and  dogs 
in  numbers  he  never  approaches  within  gunshot,  con- 
tenting himself  by  howling  piercingly  from  mountains 
at  a  long  distance.  When  a  single  sledge  was  separated 
from  the  others,  he  would  approach  to  an  uncomfortable 
range. 

Bear  tracks  were  also  numerous.  We  were,  how- 
ever, too  tired  to  give  chase.  Close  to  a  cape  where  we 
paused,  on  Eureka  Sound,  to  cut  snow-blocks  for  igloos 
attached  to  the  sledges,  E-tuk-i-shook  noted  two  bears 
wandering  over  the  lands  not  far  away.  Watching  for 
a  few  moments  with  the  glasses,  we  noted  that  they  were 
stalking  a  sleeping  musk  ox.  Now  we  did  not  care  par- 
ticularly for  the  bears,  but  the  musk  ox  was  regarded  as 
our  own  game,  and  we  were  not  willing  to  divide  it 
knowingly.  The  packs  were  pitched  into  the  snow,  and 
the  dogs  rushed  through  deep  snow,  over  hummocks 
and  rocks,  to  the  creeping  bears. 

As  the  bears  turned,  the  rear  attack  seemed  to  offer 


184  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

sport,  and  they  rose  to  meet  us.  But  as  one  team  after 
the  other  bounced  over  the  nearest  hills,  their  heads 
turned  and  they  rushed  up  the  steep  slopes.  We  now 
saw  twenty  musk  oxen  asleep  in  scattered  groups. 
These  interested  us  more  than  the  bears.  The  dogs 
were  seemingly  of  the  same  mind,  for  they  required  no 
urging  to  change  the  noses  from  the  bears  to  the 
musk  oxen. 

As  we  wound  around  the  hill  upon  which  they 
rested,  all  at  once  arose,  shook  off  the  snow,  rubbed  their 
horns  on  their  knees,  and  then  formed  a  huge  star.  In 
a  short  time  the  entire  herd  was  ours.  The  meat  was 
dressed,  wrapped  in  skins,  the  dogs  lightly  fed,  and  the 
carcasses  hauled  to  camp.  Then  we  completed  our 
igloos.  Bears  and  wolves  wandered  about  camp  all 
night,  but  with  one  hundred  dogs,  whose  eyes  were  on 
the  swelled  larder,  there  was  no  danger  from  wild 
brutes. 

Early  in  the  morning  of  March  4  we  were  awakened 
by  a  furious  noise  from  the  dogs.  Koo-loo-ting-wah 
peeked  out  and  saw  a  bear  in  the  act  of  taking  a  choice 
strip  of  tenderloin  from  the  meat.  With  a  deft  cut  of  the 
knife,  a  falling  block  of  snow  made  a  window,  and 
through  it  the  rifle  was  leveled  at  the  animal.  He  was 
big,  fat,  and  gave  us  just  the  blubber  required  for  our 
lamps. 

A  holiday  was  declared.  It  would  take  time  to 
stuff  the  dogs  with  twenty  musk  oxen  and  a  bear.  Fur- 
thermore, our  clothing  needed  attention.  Boots,  mit- 
tens, and  stockings  had  to  be  dried  and  mended.  Some 
of  our  garments  were  torn  in  places,  permitting  winds 
to  enter.  Much  of  the  dog  harness  required  fixing. 


IN  GAME  TRAILS   TO  LAND'S   END  185 

The  Eskimos'  sledges  had  been  slightly  broken.  Later, 
the  same  day,  another  herd  of  twenty  musk  oxen 
were  seen.  Now  even  the  Eskimo's  savage  thirst 
for  blood  was  satisfied.  The  pot  was  kept  boiling,  and 
the  igloos  rang  with  chants  of  primitive  joys. 

On  March  7  we  began  a  straight  run  to  the  Polar 
sea,  a  distance  of  one  hundred  and  seventy  miles.  The 
weather  was  superb  and  the  ice  again  free  of  heavy 
snow. 

In  six  marches  we  reached  Schei  Island,  which  we 
found  to  be  a  peninsula.  We  halted  here  and  a 
feast  day  was  declared.  Twenty-seven  musk  oxen  and 
twenty- four  hares  were  secured  in  one  after-dinner  hunt. 
This  meat  guaranteed  a  food  supply  to  the  shores  of  the 
Poar  sea.  A  weight  was  lifted  from  my  load  of  cares, 
for  I  had  doubted  the  existence  of  game  far  enough 
north  to  count  on  fresh  meat  to  the  sea.  The  tempera- 
ture was  still  low  ( — 50°  F.) ,  but  the  nights  were  bright- 
ening, and  the  days  offered  twelve  hours  of  good  light. 
Our  outlook  was  hopeful  indeed. 

In  the  Polar  campaign,  the  bear  was  unconsciously 
our  best  friend,  and  also  consciously  our  worst  enemy. 
There  were  times  when  we  admired  him,  although  he  was 
never  exactly  friendly  to  us.  There  were  other  times 
when  we  regarded  him  with  a  savage  wrath.  Only  be- 
yond the  range  of  life  in  the  utmost  North  were  we  free 
from  his  attacks.  In  other  places  he  nosed  our  trail 
with  curious  persistence.  He  had  attacked  the  first 
party  that  was  sent  out  to  explore  a  route,  under  cover 
of  night  and  storms.  One  man  was  wounded,  another 
lost  the  tail  of  his  coat  and  a  part  of  his  anatomy. 

In  our  march  of  glory  through  the  musk  ox  land, 


186  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

the  bear  came  as  a  rival,  and  disputed  not  only  our  right 
to  the  chase,  but  also  our  right  to  the  product  from  our 
own  catch.  But  we  had  guns  and  dogs,  and  the  bears 
fell  easily.  We  were  jealous  of  the  quest  of  the  musk 
ox.  It  seemed  properly  to  belong  to  the  domain  of 
man's  game.  We  were  equal  at  the  time  to  the  task, 
and  did  not  require  the  bear's  help. 

The  bears  were  good  at  figures,  and  quickly  real- 
ized ours  was  a  superior  fighting  force.  So  they  joined 
the  ranks  in  order  that  they  might  share  in  the  division 
of  the  spoils.  The  bear's  goodly  mission  was  always 
regarded  with  suspicion.  We  could  easily  spare  the 
bones  of  our  game,  which  he  delighted  to  pick.  We  were 
perfectly  able  to  protect  our  booty  with  one  hundred 
dogs,  whose  dinners  depended  on  open  eyes.  But  the 
bear  did  not  always  understand  our  tactics.  We  after- 
wards learned  that  we  did  not  always  understand  his, 
for  he  drove  many  prizes  into  our  arms.  But  man  is  a 
short-sighted  critic — he  sees  only  his  side  of  the  game. 

In  the  northern  march  a  much  more  friendly  spirit 
was  developed.  We  differed  on  many  points  of  ethics 
with  bruin,  and  our  fights,  successful  or  otherwise,  were 
too  numerous  and  disagreeable  to  relate  fully.  Only 
one  of  these  battles  will  be  recorded  here,  to  save  the 
reputation  of  man  as  a  superior  fighting  animal. 

We  had  made  a  long  march  of  about  forty  miles. 
Already  the  dull  purple  of  twilight  was  resting  heavily 
on  darkening  snows.  The  temperature  was  —81°. 
There  was  no  wind.  The  air  was  semi-liquid  with  sus- 
pended crystals.  When  standing  still  we  were  perfectly 
comfortable,  although  jets  of  steam  from  our  nostril 
arranged  frost  crescents  about  our  faces. 


IN  GAME  TRAILS  TO  LAND'S  END  187 

We  had  been  advancing  towards  a  group  of  musk 
oxen  for  more  than  an  hour.  We  were  now  in  the  habit 
of  living  from  catch  to  catch,  filling  up  on  meat  at  the 
end  of  each  successful  hunt,  and  waiting  for  pot-luck  for 
the  next  meal.  The  sledges  were  too  heavily  loaded  to 
carry  additional  weight.  Furthermore,  the  tempera- 
ture was  too  low  to  split  up  frozen  meat.  Indeed,  most 
of  our  axes  had  been  broken  in  trying  to  divide  meat  as 
dog  food.  It  was  plainly  an  economy  of  axes  and  fuel 
to  fill  up  on  warm  meat  as  the  skin  was  removed,  and 
wait  for  the  next  plunder. 

We  had  been  two  days  without  setting  eyes  on  an 
appetizing  meal  of  steaming  meat-.  Not  a  living  speck 
had  crossed  our  horizon;  and,  therefore,  when  we  noted 
the  little  cloud  of  steam  rise  from  a  side  hill,  and 
guessed  that  under  it  were  herds  of  musk  ox,  our 
palates  moistened  with  anticipatory  joys.  A  camping 
place  was  sought.  Two  domes  of  snow  were  erected  as 
a  shelter. 

Through  the  glasses  we  counted  twenty-one  musk 
oxen.  Some  were  digging  up  snow  to  find  willows; 
others  were  sleeping.  All  were  unsuspecting.  After 
the  experience  we  had  in  this  kind  of  hunting,  we  confi- 
dently counted  the  game  as  ours.  A  holiday  was  de- 
clared for  the  morrow,  to  dispose  of  the  surplus.  Nour- 
ishment in  prospect,  one  hundred  dogs  started  with  a 
jump,  under  the  lashes  of  ten  Eskimos.  Our  sledges 
began  shooting  the  boreal  shoots.  After  rushing  over 
minor  hills,  the  dog  noses  sank  into  bear  tracks.  A  little 
farther  along,  wre  realized  we  had  rivals.  Two  bears 
were  far  ahead,  approaching  the  musk  oxen. 

The    dogs    scented    their    rivals.     The    increased 


188  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

bounding  of  the  sledges  made  looping-the-loop  seem 
tame.  But  we  were  too  late;  the  bears  ran  into  the 
bunch  of  animals,  and  spoiled  our  game  with  no  advan- 
tage to  themselves.  Giving  a  half-hearted  chase,  they 
rose  to  a  bank  of  snow,  deliberately  sat  down,  and  turned 
to  a  position  to  give  us  the  laugh. 

The  absence  of  musk  ox  did  not  slacken  the  pace 
of  the  dogs.  The  bears  were  quick  to  see  the  force  of 
our  intent.  They  scattered  and  climbed.  A  bear  is  an 
expert  Alpinist;  he  requires  no  ice  axe  and  no  lantern. 
The  moon  came  out,  and  the  snow  slopes  began  to  glare 
with  an  electric  incandescence. 

In  this  pearly  light,  the  white  bear  seemed  black, 
and  was  easily  located.  One  bear  slipped  into  a  ravine 
and  was  lost.  All  attention  was  now  given  to  the  other, 
which  was  ascending  an  icy  ridge  to  a  commanding 
precipice.  We  cut  the  dogs  from  the  sledges.  They 
soared  up  the  white  slope  as  if  they  had  wings.  The 
bear  gained  the  crest  in  time  to  cuff  away  each  rising 
antagonist.  The  dogs  tumbled  over  each  other,  down 
several  hundred  feet  into  a  soft  snow-padded  gully. 
Other  dogs  continued  to  rise  on  the  ridge  to  keep  the 
bear  guessing.  The  dogs  in  the  pit  discovered  a  new 
route,  and  made  a  combined  rear  attack.  Bruin  was 
surprised,  and  turned  to  face  his  enemies.  Backing  from 
a  sudden  assault,  he  stepped  over  a  precipice,  and  tum- 
bled in  a  heap  into  the  dog-strewn  pit.  The  battle  was 
now  on  in  full  force.  Finding  four  feet  more  useful 
than  one  mouth,  the  bear  turned  on  his  back  and  sent  his 
paws  out  with  telling  effect.  The  dogs,  although  not 
giving  up  the  battle,  scattered,  for  the  swing  of  the 
creature's  feet  did  not  suit  their  battle  methods.  Sit- 


IN  GAME  TRAILS  TO  LAND'S   END  189 

ting  on  curled  tails,  they  filled  the  air  with  murderous 
howls  and  raised  clouds  of  frozen  breath  in  the  flying 
snow. 

We  were  on  the  scene  at  a  safe  distance,  each  with 
a  tight  grip  on  his  gun,  expecting  the  bear  to  make  a 
sudden  plunge.  But  he  was  not  given  a  choice  of  move- 
ment, and  we  could  not  shoot  into  the  darting  pit  of 
dogs  without  injuring  them.  At  this  moment  Ah-we- 
lah,  youngest  of  the  party,  advanced.  Leaving  his  gun, 
he  descended  through  the  dog  ranks  into  the  pit,  with 
the  spiked  harpoon  shaft.  The  bear  threw  back  its 
head  to  meet  him.  A  score  of  dogs  grabbed  the  bear's 
feet.  Ah-we-lah  raised  his  arm.  A  sudden  savage 
thrust  sank  the  blunt  steel  into  the  bear's  chest.  Crack- 
ing whips,  we  scattered  the  guarding  dogs  The  prize 
was  quickly  divided. 

On  our  advance  to  the  Polar  sea,  I  found  that  there 
is  considerable  art  in  building  snowhouses.  The  casual 
observer  is  likely  to  conclude  that  it  is  an  easy  problem 
to  pile  up  snow-blocks,  dome-shaped,  but  to  do  this 
properly,  so  that  the  igloo  will  withstand  wind,  requires 
adept  work.  From  the  lessons  of  my  companions  in 
this  art  I  now  became  more  alert  to  learn,  knowing  the 
necessity  of  protection  on  our  Polar  dash. 

The  first  problem  is  to  find  proper  snow.  One  has 
often  to  seek  for  banks  where  the  snow  is  just  hard 
enough.  If  it  is  too  hard,  it  cannot  be  easily  cut  with 
knives.  If  it  is  too  soft,  the  blocks  will  crush,  and  cause 
the  house  to  cave  in.  Long  knives  are  the  best  instru- 
ments— one  of  fifteen  inches  and  another  about  ten. 
From  sixty  to  seventy-five  blocks,  fifteen  by  twenty- 
four  inches,  are  required  to  make  a  house  ten  feet  by  ten. 


190  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

The  blocks  are  cut  according  to  the  snow,  but  fifteen  by 
twenty-four  by  eight  inches  is  the  best  size. 

The  lower  tiers  of  blocks  are  set  in  slight  notches  in 
the  snow,  to  prevent  the  blocks  from  slipping  out.  A 
slight  tilt  begins  from  the  first  tiers;  the  next  tier  tilts 
still  more,  and  so  the  next.  The  blocks  are  set  so  that 
the  upper  blocks  cover  the  breaks  in  the  lower  tier.  The 
fitting  is  done  mostly  with  the  blocks  in  position,  the 
knife  being  passed  between  the  blocks  to  and  fro,  with 
a  pressure  on  the  blocks  with  the  other  hand.  The 
hardest  task  is  to  make  the  blocks  stick  without  holding 
in  the  upper  tiers.  This  is  done  by  deft  cuts  with  the 
knife  and  a  slight  thump  of  the  blocks. 

The  dome  is  the  most  difficult  part  to  build.  In 
doing  this  all  blocks  are  leveled  and  carefully  set  to  arch 
the  roof. 

When  the  structure  is  completed,  a  candle  is  lit  and 
the  cracks  are  stuffed  by  cutting  the  edges  off  the  near- 
est blocks,  and  pressing  the  broken  snow  into  the  cracks 
with  the  mittens.  After  this  process,  the  interior  ar- 
rangement is  worked  out.  The  foot  space  is  first  cut 
out  in  blocks.  If  the  snow  is  on  a  slope,  as  it  often  hap- 
pens, these  blocks  are  raised  and  the  upper  slopes  are 
cut  down  to  a  level  plane. 

The  foot  space  is  a  very  important  matter,  first  for 
the  comfort  of  sitting,  and  also  to  let  off  the  carbonic 
acid  gas,  which  quickly  settles  in  these  temperatures  and 
extinguishes  the  fires.  It,  of  course,  has  also  an  impor- 
tant bearing  on  human  breathing. 

Inhalation  of  very  cold  air  at  this  time  forced  an 
unconscious  expenditure  of  very  much  energy.  The 
extent  of  this  tax  can  be  gauged  only  by  the  enormous 


IN  GAME  TRAILS   TO  LAND'S   END  191 

difference  between  the  temperature  of  the  body  and  that 
of  the  air.  One  day  it  was  — 72°  F.  The  difference 
was,  therefore,  170°.  It  is  hard  to  conceive  of  normal 
breathing  under  such  difficulties;  but  when  properly 
clothed  and  fed,  no  great  discomfort  or  ill-effects  are 
noted.  The  membranes  of  the  air  passages  are,  how- 
ever, overflushed  with  blood.  The  chest  circulation  is 
forced  to  its  limits,  and  the  heart  beats  are  increased  and 
strengthened.  The  organs  of  circulation  and  respira- 
tion, which  do  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  work  of  the  body, 
are  taxed  with  a  new  burden  that  must  be  counted  in 
estimating  one's  day's  task.  This  loss  of  power  in 
breathing  extreme  frost  is  certain  to  reduce  working 
time  and  bodily  force. 

The  land  whose  coast  we  were  following  to  the 
shores  of  the  Polar  sea  is  part  of  the  American  hemi- 
sphere, and  one  of  the  largest  islands  of  the  world, 
spreading  30°  longitude  and  rising  7°  of  latitude.  What 
is  its  name?  The  question  must  remained  unanswered, 
for  it  not  only  has  no  general  name,  but  numerous  sec- 
tions are  written  with  names  and  outlines  that  differ  to  a 
large  extent  with  the  caprice  of  the  explorers  who  have 
been  there. 

The  south  is  called  Lincoln  Land;  above  it, 
Ellesmere  Land.  Then  comes  Schley  Land,  Grinnell 
Land,  Arthur  Land,  and  Grant  Land,  with  other  lands 
of  later  christening  by  Sverdrup  and  others. 

No  human  beings  inhabit  the  island.  No  nation 
assumes  the  responsibility  of  claiming  or  protecting  it. 
The  Eskimo  calls  the  entire  country  Acpohon,  or  "the 
Land  of  Guillemots,"  which  are  found  in  great  abun- 
dance along  the  southeast  point.  I  have,  therefore,  to 


192  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

avoid  conflictions,  affixed  the  name  of  Acpohon  as  the 
general  designation. 

We  had  now  advanced  beyond  the  range  of  all 
primitive  life.  No  human  voice  broke  the  frigid  silence. 
The  Eskimos  had  wandered  into  the  opening  of  the 
musk  ox  pass.  Sverdrup  had  mapped  the  channels  of 
the  west  coast.  But  here  was  no  trace  of  modern  or  abo- 
riginal residence.  There  is  no  good  reason  why  men 
should  not  have  followed  the  musk  oxen  here,  but  the 
nearest  Eskimos  on  the  American  side  are  those  on  Lan- 
caster Sound. 

I  found  an  inspiration  in  being  thus  alone  at  the 
world's  end.  The  barren  rocks,  the  wastes  of  snow- 
fields,  the  mountains  stripped  of  earlier  ice-sheets,  and 
every  phase  of  the  landscape,  assured  a  new  interest. 
There  was  a  note  of  absolute  abandon  on  the  part  of 
nature.  If  our  own  resources  failed,  or  if  a  calamity 
overtook  us,  there  would  be  no  trace  to  mark  icy  graves 
forever  hidden  from  surviving  loved  ones. 

My  Eskimo  comrades  were  enthusiastic  explorers. 
The  game  trails  gave  a  touch  of  animation  to  their  steps, 
which  meant  much  to  the  progress  of  the  expedition. 
We  not  only  saw  musk  oxen  in  large  herds,  but  tracks 
of  bears  and  wolves  were  everywhere  in  line  with  our 
course.  On  the  sea-ice  we  noted  many  seal  blow-holes. 
Already  the  natives  talked  of  coming  here  on  the  fol- 
lowing year  to  cast  their  lot  in  the  new  wilds. 

The  picturesque  headland  of  Schie  we  found  to  be 
a  huge  triassic  rock  of  the  same  general  formation  as 
that  indicated  along  .Eureka  Sound.  Its  west  offered  a 
series  of  grassy  slopes  bared  by  persistent  winds,  upon 
which  animal  life  found  easy  access  to  the  winter-cured 


IN  GAME  TRAILS  TO  LAND'S  END  193 

grass.  A  narrow  neck  of  land  connected  what  seemed 
like  an  Island  with  the  main  land.  Here  caches  of  fur 
and  fuel  were  left  for  the  return.  In  passing  Snag's 
Fiord  the  formation  changed.  Here,  for  several 
marches,  game  was  scarce.  The  temperature  rose  as  we 
neared  the  Polar  sea.  The  snow  became  much  deeper 
but  it  was  hardened  by  stronger  winds  and  increased 
humidity.  High  glacier-abandoned  valleys  with  grad- 
ual slopes  to  the  water's  edge,  gave  the  Heiberg  shores 
on  Nansen  Sound  a  different  type  of  landscape  from 
that  of  the  opposite  shores.  Here  and  there  we  found 
pieces  of  lignite  coal,  and  as  we  neared  Svartevoeg  the 
carboniferous  formation  became  more  evident. 

Camping  in  the  lowlands  just  south  of  Svartevoeg 
Cliffs  we  secured  seven  musk  oxen  and  eighty-five  hares. 
Here  were  immense  fields  of  grass  and  moss  bared  by 
persistent  winter  gales.  By  a  huge  indentation  here, 
through  which  we  saw  the  sea-level  ice  of  the  west,  the 
shores  seemed  to  indicate  that  the  point  of  Heiberg  is  an 
island,  but  of  this  we  were  not  absolutely  sure.  To  us 
it  was  a  great  surprise  that  here,  on  the  shores  of  the 
JPolar  sea,  we  found  a  garden  spot  of  plant  luxuriance 
and  animal  delight.  For  this  assured,  in  addition  to  the 
caches  left  en  route,  a  sure  food  supply  for  the  return 
from  our  mission  to  the  North. 


THE  TRANS-BOREAL  DASH  BEGINS 

BY  FORCED  EFFORTS  AND  THE  USE  OF  AXES  SPEED  IS  MADE 
OVER  THE  LAND-ADHERING  PACK  ICE  OF  POLAR  SEA — 
THE  MOST  DIFFICULT  TRAVEL  OF  THE  PROPOSED 
JOURNEY  SUCCESSFULLY  ACCOMPLISHED REGRET- 
FUL PARTING  WITH  THE  ESKIMOS 

XIII 

FIVE  HUNDRED  MILES  FROM  THE  POLE 

Svartevoeg  is  a  great  cliff,  the  northernmost  point 
of  Heiberg  Land,  which  leaps  precipitously  into  the 
Polar  sea.  Its  negroid  face  of  black  scarred  rocks 
frowns  like  the  carven  stone  countenance  of  some  hide- 
ously mutilated  and  enraged  Titan  savage.  It  ex- 
presses, more  than  a  human  face  could,  the  unendurable 
sufferings  of  this  region  of  frigid  horrors.  It  is  five 
hundred  and  twenty  miles  from  the  North  Pole. 

From  this  point  I  planned  to  make  my  dash  in  as 
straight  a  route  as  might  be  possible.  Starting  from 
our  camp  at  Annoatok  late  in  February,  when  the  cur- 
tain of  night  was  just  beginning  to  lift,  when  the  chill 
of  the  long  winter  was  felt  at  its  worst,  we  had  forced 
progress  through  deep  snows,  over  land  and  frozen  seas, 
braving  the  most  furious  storms  of  the  season  and  trav- 
eling despite  baffling  darkness,  and  had  covered  in  less 
than  a  month  about  four  hundred  miles — nearly  half 


THE  TRANS-BOREAL  DASH  BEGINS          195 

the  distance  between  our  winter  camp  and  the  Pole. 

Arriring  at  land's  end  my  heart  had  cause  for 
gratification.  We  had  weathered  the  worst  storms  of 
the  year.  The  long  bitter  night  had  now  been  lost.  The 
days  lengthened  and  inraded  with  glitter  the  decreasing 
nights.  The  sun  glowed  more  radiantly  daily,  rose 
higher  and  higher  to  a  continued  afterglow  in  cheery 
blues,  and  sank  for  periods  briefer  and  briefer  in  seas  of 
running  color.  Our  hopes,  .like  those  of  all  mankind,  had 
risen  with  the  soul-lifting  sun.  We  had  made  our  prog- 
ress mainly  at  the  expense  of  the  land  which  we  explored, 
for  the  game  en  route  had  furnished  food  and  clothing. 

The  supplies  we  had  brought  with  us  from  Annoa- 
tok  were  practically  untouched.  We  had  stepped  in 
overfed  skins,  were  fired  by  a  resolution  which  was  re- 
charged by  a  strength  bred  of  feeding  upon  abundant 
raw  and  wholesome  meat.  Eating  to  repletion  on  un- 
limited game,  our  bodies  were  kept  in  excellent  trim  by 
the  exigencies  of  constant  and  difficult  traveling. 

As  a  man's  mental  force  is  the  result  of  yesteryears' 
upbuilding,  so  his  strength  of  to-day  is  the  result  of  last 
week's  eating.  With  the  surge  of  ambition  which  had 
been  formulating  for  twenty  years,  and  my  body  in  best 
physical  shape  for  the  supreme  test,  the  Pole  now 
seemed  almost  near. 

As  the  great  cliffs  of  Svartevoeg  rose  before  us  my 
heart  leaped.  I  felt  that  the  first  rung  in  the  ladder  of 
success  had  been  climbed,  and  as  I  stood  under  the  black 
cliffs  of  this  earth's  northernmost  land  I  felt  that  I 
looked  through  the  eyes  of  long  experience.  Having 
reached  the  end  of  Nansen  Sound,  with  Svartevoeg  on 
my  left,  and  the  tall,  scowling  cliffs  of  Lands-Lokk  on 


196  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

my  right,  I  viewed  for  the  first  time  the  rough  and  heavy 
ice  of  the  untracked  Polar  sea,  over  which,  knowing  the 
conditions  of  the  sea  ice,  I  anticipated  the  most  difficult 
part  of  our  journey  lay.  Imagine  before  you  fields  of 
crushed  ice,  glimmering  in  the  rising  sunlight  with  shoot- 
ing fires  of  sapphire  and  green;  fields  which  have  been 
slowly  forced  downward  by  strong  currents  from  the 
north,  and  pounded  and  piled  in  jagged  mountainous 
heaps  for  miles  about  the  land.  Beyond  this  difficult  ice, 
as  I  knew,  lay  more  even  fields,  over  which  traveling, 
saving  the  delays  of  storms  and  open  leads,  would  be 
comparatively  easy.  To  encompass  this  rough  prospect 
was  the  next  step  in  reaching  my  goal.  I  felt  that  no 
time  must  be  lost.  At  this  point  I  was  now  to  embark 
upon  the  Polar  sea;  the  race  for  my  life's  ambition  was 
to  begin  here;  but  first  I  had  finally  to  resolve  on  the 
details  of  my  campaign. 

I  decided  to  reduce  my  party  to  the  smallest  pos- 
sible number  consistent  with  the  execution  of  the  prob- 
lem in  hand.  In  addition,  for  greater  certainty  of 
action  over  the  unknown  regions  beyond,  I  now  defi- 
nitely resolved  to  simplify  the  entire  equipment.  An 
extra  sled  was  left  at  the  cache  at  this  point  to  insure 
a  good  vehicle  for  our  return  in  case  the  two  sleds  which 
we  were  to  take  should  be  badly  broken  en  route.  I 
decided  to  take  only  two  men  on  the  last  dash.  I  had 
carefully  watched  and  studied  every  one  of  my  party, 
and  had  already  selected  E-tuk-i-shook  and  Ah-we-lah, 
two  young  Eskimos,  each  about  twenty  years  old,  as  best 
fitted  to  be  my  sole  companions  in  the  long  run  of 
destiny. 

Twenty-six  of  the  best  dogs  were  picked,  and  upon 


THE  TRANS-BOREAL  DASH  BEGINS          197 

two  sleds  were  to  be  loaded  all  our  needs  for  a  trip  esti- 
mated to  last  eighty  days. 

To  have  increased  this  party  would  not  have  enabled 
us  to  carry  supplies  for  a  greater  number  of  days. 

The  sleds  might  have  been  loaded  more  heavily,  but 
I  knew  this  would  reduce  the  important  progress  of  the 
first  days-. 

With  the  character  of  ice  which  we  had  before  us, 
advance  stations  were  impossible.  A  large  expedition 
and  a  heavy  equipment  would  have  been  imprudent. 
We  must  win  or  lose  in  a  prolonged  effort  at  high  press- 
ure. Therefore,  absolute  control  and  ease  of  adapt- 
ability to  a  changing  environment  was  imperative. 

From  past  experience  I  knew  it  was  impossible  to 
control  adequately  the  complex  human  temperament  of 
white  men  in  the  Polar  wilderness.  But  I  felt  certain 
the  two  Eskimo  boys  could  be  trusted  to  follow  to  the 
limit  of  my  own  endurance.  So  our  sleds  were  bur- 
dened only  with  absolute  necessaries. 

Because  of  the  importance  of  a  light  and  efficient 
equipment,  much  care  had  to  be  taken  to  reduce  every 
ounce  of  weight.  The  sleds  were  made  of  hickory,  the 
lightest  wood  consistent  with  great  endurance,  and 
every  needless  fibre  was  gouged  out.  The  iron  shoes 
were  ground  thin,  and  up  to  the  present  had  stood  the 
test  of  half  the  Polar  battle. 

Eliminating  everything  not  actually  needed,  but 
selecting  adequate  food,  I  made  the  final  preparations. 

The  camp  equipment  selected  included  the  follow- 
ing articles:  One  blow  fire  lamp  (jeuel),  three  alumi- 
num pails,  three  aluminum  cups,  three  aluminum  tea- 
spoons, one  tablespoon,  three  tin  plates,  six  pocket 


198  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

knives,  two  butcher  knives  (ten  inches),  one  saw  knife 
(thirteen  inches),  one  long  knife  (fifteen  inches),  one 
rifle  (Sharp's),  one  rifle  (Winchester  .22),  one  hundred 
and  ten  cartridges,  one  hatchet,  one  Alpine  axe,  extra 
line  and  lashings,  and  three  personal  bags. 

The  sled  equipment  consisted  of  two  sleds  weigh- 
ing fifty-two  pounds  each;  one  twelve-foot  folding  can- 
vas boat,  the  wood  of  which  formed  part  of  a  sled ;  one 
silk  tent,  two  canvas  sled  covers,  two  reindeer  skin  sleep- 
ing bags,  floor  furs,  extra  wood  for  sled  repairs,  screws, 
nails  and  rivets. 

My  instruments  were  as  follows :  One  field  glass ; 
one  pocket  compass ;  one  liquid  compass ;  one  aluminum 
surveying  compass,  with  azimuth  attachment;  one 
French  surveyor's  sextant,  with  radius  7*/2>  divided  on 
silver  to  10',  reading  by  Vernier  to  10"  (among  the  extra 
attachments  were  a  terrestrial  and  an  astronomical  tele- 
scope, and  an  extra  night  telescope  mounted  in  alumi- 
num, and  also  double  refracting  prisms,  thermometers, 
etc. — the  instrument  was  made  by  Hurleman  of  France 
and  bought  of  Keuffel  &  Esser)  ;  one  glass  artificial 
horizon;  three  Howard  pocket  chronometers;  one  Tif- 
fany watch;  one  pedometer;  map-making  material  and 
instruments;  three  thermometers;  one  aneroid  barom- 
eter; one  camera  and  films;  notebook  and  pencils. 

The  personal  bags  contained  four  extra  pairs  of 
kamiks,  with  fur  stockings,  a  woolen  shirt,  three  pairs  of 
sealskin  mittens,  two  pairs  of  fur  mittens,  a  piece  of 
blanket,  a  sealskin  coat  (netsha) ,  extra  fox  tails  and  dog 
harness,  a  repair  kit  for  mending  clothing,  and  much 
other  necessary  material. 

On  the  march  we  wore  snow  goggles,  blue  fox  coats 


THE  TRANS-BOREAL  DASH  BEGINS          199 

(kapitahs)  and  birdskin  shirts  (Ah-tea),  bearskin  pants 
(Nan-nooka) ,  sealskin  boots  (Kam-ik) ,  hare-skin  stock- 
ings (Ah-tee-shah),  and  a  band  of  fox  tails  under  the 
knee  and  about  the  waist. 

The  food  supply,  as  will  be  seen  by  the  following 
list,  was  mostly  pemmican: 

Eight  hundred  and  five  pounds  of  beef  pemmican, 
one  hundred  and  thirty  pounds  of  walrus  pemmican, 
fifty  pounds  of  musk  ox  tenderloin,  twenty-five  pounds 
of  musk  ox  tallow,  two  pounds  of  tea,  one  pound  of 
coffee,  twenty-five  pounds  of  sugar,  forty  pounds  of 
condensed  milk,  sixty  pounds  of  milk  biscuit,  ten  pounds 
of  pea  soup  powdered  and  compressed,  fifty  pounds  of 
surprises,  forty  pounds  petroleum,  two  pounds  of  wood 
alcohol,  three  pounds  of  candles  and  one  pound  of 
matches. 

We  planned  our  future  food  supply  with  pemmican 
as  practically  the  sole  food;  the  other  things  were  to  be 
mere  palate  satisfiers.  For  the  eighty  days  the  supply 
was  to  be  distributed  as  follows : 

For  three  men :  Pemmican,  one  pound  per  day  for 
eighty  days,  two  hundred  and  forty  pounds.  For  six 
dogs:  Pemmican,  one  pound  per  day  for  eighty  days, 
four  hundred  and  eighty  pounds.  This  necessitated  a 
total  of  seven  hundred  and  twenty  pounds  of  pemmican. 

Of  the  twenty-six  dogs,  we  had  at  first  figured  on 
taking  sixteen  over  the  entire  trip  to  the  Pole  and  back 
to  our  caches  on  land,  but  in  this  last  calculation  only  six 
were  to  be  taken.  Twenty,  the  least  useful,  were  to 
be  used  one  after  the  other,  as  food  on  the  march,  as 
soon  as  reduced  loads  and  better  ice  permitted.  This, 
we  counted,  would  give  one  thousand  pounds  of  fresh 


200  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

meat  over  and  above  our  pemmican  supply.  We 
carried  about  two  hundred  pounds  of  pemmican 
above  the  expected  consumption,  and  in  the  final  work- 
ing out  the  dogs  were  used  for  traction  purposes  longer 
than  we  anticipated.  But,  with  a  cautious  saving,  the 
problem  was  solved  somewhat  more  economically  than 
any  figuring  before  the  start  indicated. 

Every  possible  article  of  equipment  was  made  to  do 
double  service ;  not  an  ounce  of  dead  weight  was  carried 
which  could  be  dispensed  with. 

After  making  several  trips  about  Svartevoeg,  ar- 
ranging caches  for  the  return,  studying  the  ice  and  land, 
I  decided  to  make  the  final  start  on  the  Polar  sea  on 
March  18,  1908. 

The  time  had  come  to  part  with  most  of  our  faithful 
Eskimo  companions.  Taking  their  hands  in  my  manner 
of  parting,  I  thanked  them  as  well  as  I  could  for  their 
faithful  service  to  me.  "Tigishi  ah  yaung-ulukr  (The 
big  nail!),  they  replied,  wishing  me  luck. 

Then,  in  a  half  gale  blowing  from  the  northwest  and 
charged  with  snow,  they  turned  their  backs  upon  me  and 
started  upon  the  return  track.  They  carried  little  but 
ammunition,  because  we  had  learned  that  plenty  of  game 
was  to  be  provided  along  the  return  courses. 

Even  after  they  were  out  of  sight  in  the  drifting 
snowstorm  their  voices  came  cheerily  back  to  me.  The 
faithful  savages  had  followed  me  until  told  that  I  could 
use  them  no  longer ;  and  it  was  not  only  for  their  simple 
pay  of  knives  and  guns,  but  because  of  a  real  desire  to 
be  helpful.  Their  parting  enforced  a  pang  of  loneliness.* 

*A   great    deal   of   careful   search    and    study   was    prosecuted    about 
Svartevoeg,  for  here  Peary  claims  to  have  left  a  cache,  the  alleged  placing 


THE  TRANS-BOREAL  DASH  BEGINS          201 

With  a  snow-charged  blast  in  our  faces  it  was  im- 
possible for  us  to  start  immediately  after  the  Eskimos 
returned.  Withdrawing  to  the  snow  igloo,  we  entered 
our  bags  and  slept  a  few  hours  longer.  At  noon  the 
horizon  cleared.  The  wind  veered  to  the  southwest  and 
came  with  an  endurable  force.  Doubly  rationed  the 
night  before,  the  dogs  were  not  to  be  fed  again  for  two 
days.  The  time  had  come  to  start.  We  quickly  loaded 
our  sleds.  Hitching  the  dogs,  we  let  the  whips  fall,  and 
with  bounds  they  leaped  around  deep  ice  grooves  in  the 
great  paleocrystic  floes. 

Our  journey  was  begun.  Swept  of  snow  by  the 
force  of  the  preceding  storm,  the  rough  ice  crisply 
cracked  under  the  swift  speed  of  our  sleds.  Even  on 
this  uneven  surface  the  dogs  made  such  speed  that  I  kept 
ahead  of  them  only  with  difficulty.  Their  barking  pealed 
about  us  and  re-echoed  from  the  black  cliffs  behind. 
Dashing  about  transparent  ultramarine  gorges,  and 
about  the  base  of  miniature  mountains  of  ice,  we  soon 
came  into  a  region  of  undulating  icy  hills.  The  hard 
irregularity  of  the  ice  at  times  endangered  our  sleds. 
We  climbed  over  ridges  like  walls.  We  jumped  dan- 
gerous crevasses,  keeping  slightly  west  by  north;  the 
land  soon  sank  in  the  rear  of  us.  Drifting  clouds  and 
wind-driven  snows  soon  screened  the  tops  of  black  moun- 
tains. Looking  behind,  I  saw  only  a  swirling,  moving 
scene  of  dull  white  and  nebulous  gray.  On  every  side 
ice  hummocks  heaved  their  backs  and  writhed  by.  Be- 

of  which  he  has  used  as  a  pretext  for  attempting  to  take  from  the  map 
the  name  of  Svartevoeg,  given  by  Sverdrup,  when  he  discovered  it,  to  the 
northern  part  of  Heiberg  Land.  Peary,  coming  later,  put  on  his  map  the 
name  Cape  Thomas  Hubbard,  for  one  who  had  put  easy  money  in  his 
hands.  But  no  such  cache  was  found,  and  I  doubt  very  much  if  Peary  ever 
reached  this  point,  except  through  a  field-glass  at  very  long  range. 


202  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

hind  me  followed  four  snugly  loaded  sleds,  drawn  by 
forty-four  selected  dogs,  under  the  lash  of  four  expert 
Eskimo  drivers.  The  dogs  pranced;  the  joyous  cries  of 
the  natives  rose  and  fell.  My  heart  leaped;  my  soul 
sang.  I  felt  my  blood  throb  with  each  gallop  of  the  leap- 
ing dog  teams.  The  sound  of  their  feet  pattering  on  the 
snow,  the  sight  of  their  shaggy  bodies  tossing  forward, 
gave  me  joy.  For  every  foot  of  ice  covered,  every  min- 
ute of  constant  action,  drew  me  nearer,  ever  nearer,  to 
my  goal. 

Our  first  run  was  auspicious;  it  seemed  to  augur 
success.  By  the  time  we  paused  to  rest  we  had  covered 
twenty-six  miles. 

We  pitched  camp  on  a  floeberg  of  unusual  height ; 
about  us  were  many  big  hummocks,  and  to  the  lee  of 
these  banks  of  hardened  snow.  Away  from  land  it  is 
always  more  difficult  to  find  snow  suitable  for  cutting 
building  blocks.  There,  however,  was  an  abundance. 
We  busily  built,  in  the  course  of  an  hour,  a  comfortable 
snow  igloo.  Into  it  we  crept,  grateful  for  shelter  from 
the  piercing  wind. 

The  dogs  curled  up  and  went  to  sleep  without  a  call, 
as  if  they  knew  that  there  would  be  no  food  until  tomor- 
row. My  wild  companions  covered  their  faces  with  their 
long  hair  and  sank  quietly  into  slumber.  For  me  sleep 
was  impossible.  The  whole  problem  of  our  campaign 
had  again  to  be  carefully  studied,  and  final  plans  made, 
not  only  to  reach  our  ultimate  destination,  but  for  the 
two  returning  Eskimos  and  for  the  security  of  the  things 
left  at  Annoatok,  and  also  to  re-examine  the  caches  left 
en  route  for  our  return.  These  must  be  protected  as 
well  as  possible  against  the  bears  and  wolves. 


THE  TRANS-BOREAL  DASH  BEGINS          203 

Already  I  had  begun  to  think  of  our  return  to  land. 
It  was  difficult  at  this  time  even  to  approximate  any 
probable  course.  Much  would  depend  upon  conditions 
to  be  encountered  in  the  northward  route.  Although  we 
had  left  caches  of  supplies  with  the  object  of  returning 
along  Nanseri  Sound,  into  Cannon  Fiord  and  over 
Arthur  Land,  I  entertained  grave  doubts  of  our  ability 
to  return  this  way.  I  knew  that  if  the  ice  should  drift 
strongly  to  the  east  we  might  not  be  given  the  choice  of 
working  out  our  own  return.  For,  in  such  an  event,  we 
should  perhaps  be  carried  helplessly  to  Greenland,  and 
should  have  to  seek  a  return  either  along  the  east  or 
the  west  coast. 

This  drift,  in  my  opinion,  would  not  necessarily 
mean  dangerous  hardships,  for  the  musk  oxen  would 
keep  us  alive  to  the  west,  and  to  the  east  it  seemed  pos- 
sible to  reach  Shannon  Island,  where  the  Baldwin- 
Zeigler  expeditions  had  abandoned  a  large  cache  of  sup- 
plies. It  appeared  not  improbable,  also,  that  a  large 
land  extension  might  offer  a  safe  return  much  further 
west.  I  fell  asleep  while  pondering  over  these  things.  By 
morning  the  air  was  clear  of  frost  crystals.  It  was  in- 
tensely cold,  not  only  because  of  a  temperature  of  56° 
below  zero,  Fahrenheit,  but  a  humid  chill  which  pierced 
to  the  very  bones.  A  light  breeze  came  from  the  west. 
The  sun  glowed  in  a  freezing  field  of  blue. 

Hitching  our  dogs,  we  started.  For  several  hours 
we  seemed  to  soar  over  the  white  spaces.  Then  the  ice 
changed  in  character,  the  expansive,  thick  fields  of 
glacier-like  ice  giving  way  to  floes  of  moderate  size  and 
thickness.  These  were  separated  by  zones  of  trouble- 
some crushed  ice  thrown  into  high-pressure  lines,  which 


204  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

offered  serious  barriers.  Chopping  the  pathway  with 
an  ice  axe,  we  managed  to  make  fair  progress.  We 
covered  twenty-one  miles  of  our  second  run  on  the  Polar 
sea.  I  expected,  at  the  beginning  of  this  final  effort, 
to  send  back  by  this  time  the  two  extra  men,  Koo-loo- 
ting-wah  and  In-u-gi-to,  who  had  remained  to  help  us 
over  the  rough  pack-ice.  But  progress  had  not  been  as 
good  as  I  had  expected;  so,  although  we  could  hardly 
spare  any  food  to  feed  their  dogs,  the  two  volunteered 
to  push  along  for  another  day  without  dog  food. 

Taking  advantage  of  big,  strong  teams  and  the  fire 
of  early  enthusiasm,  we  aimed  to  force  long  distances 
through  the  extremely  difficult  ice  jammed  here  against 
the  distant  land.  The  great  weight  of  the  supplies  in- 
tended for  the  final  two  sleds  were  now  distributed  over 
four  sleds.  With  axe  and  compass  in  hand,  I  led  the 
way.  With  prodigious  effort  I  chopped  openings 
through  barriers  after  barriers  of  ice.  Sled  after  sled 
was  passed  over  the  tumbling  series  of  obstacles  by  my 
companions  while  I  advanced  to  open  a  way  through  the 
next.  With  increasing  difficulties  in  some  troublesome 
ice,  we  camped  after  making  only  sixteen  miles-.  Al- 
though weary,  we  built  a  small  snowhouse.  I  prepared 
over  my  stove  a  pot  of  steaming  musk  ox  loins  and  broth 
and  a  double  brew  of  tea.  After  partaking  of  this  our 
two  helpers  prepared  to  return.  To  have  taken  them 
farther  would  have  necessitated  a  serious  drain  on  our 
supplies  and  an  increased  danger  for  their  lives  in  a 
longer  return  to  land. 

By  these  men  I  sent  back  instructions  to  Rudolph 
Francke  to  remain  in  charge  of  my  supplies  at  Annoatok 
until  June  5th,  1908,  and  then,  if  we  should  not  have  re- 


,_ 


-,,  " 


f 


p.  I 


DEPARTURE  OF  SUPPORTING  PARTY 
A  BREATHING  SPELL 
POLEWARD  ! 


THE  TRANS-BOREAL  DASH  BEGINS          205 

turned  by  that  date,  to  place  Koo-looting-wah  in  charge 
and  go  home  either  by  a  whaler  or  some  Danish  ship.  I 
knew  that,  should  we  get  in  trouble,  he  could  offer  no 
relief  to  help  us,  and  that  his  waiting  an  indefinite  time 
alone  would  be  a  needless  hardship. 

The  way  before  Koo-loo-ting-wah  and  In-u-gi-to, 
who  had  so  cheerfully  remained  to  the  last  possible  mo- 
ment that  they  could  be  of  help,  was  not  an  entirely 
pleasant  one.  Their  friends  were  by  now  well  on  their 
journey  toward  Annoatok,  and  they  had  to  start  after 
them  with  sleds  empty  of  provisions  and  dogs  hungry  for 
food. 

They  hoped  to  get  back  to  land  and  off  the  ice  of 
the  Polar  sea  in  one  long  day's  travel  of  twenty-four 
hours.  Even  this  would  leave  their  fourth  day  without 
food  for  their  dogs.  In  case  of  storms  or  moving  of 
the  ice,  other  days  of  famine  might  easily  fall  to  their  lot. 
However,  they  faced  possible  dangers  cheerfully  rather 
than  ask  me  to  give  them  anything  from  the  stores  that 
were  to  support  their  two  companions,  myself  and  our 
dogs  on  our  way  onward  to  the  Pole  and  back.  I  was 
deeply  touched  by  this  superlative  devotion.  They  as- 
sured me  too  (in  which  they  were  right)  that  they  had 
an  abundance  of  possible  food  in  the  eighteen  dogs  they 
took  with  them.  If  necessary,  they  could  sacrifice  a  few 
at  any  time  for  the  benefit  of  the  others,  as  must  often 
be  done  in  the  Northland. 

There  were  no  formalities  in  our  parting  on  the 
desolate  ice.  Yet,  as  the  three  of  us  who  were  left 
alone  gazed  after  our  departing  companions,  we  felt  a 
poignant  pang  in  our  hearts.  About  us  was  a  cheerless 
waste  of  crushed  wind-and-water-driven  ice.  A  sharp 


206  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

wind  stung  our  faces.  The  sun  was  obscured  by  clouds 
which  piled  heavily  and  darkly  about  the  horizon.  The 
cold  and  brilliant  jeweled  effects  of  the  frozen  sea  were 
lost  in  a  dismal  hue  of  dull  white  and  sombre  gray.  On 
the  horizon,  Svartevoeg,  toward  which  the  returning 
Eskimos  were  bound,  was  but  a  black  speck.  To  the 
north,  where  our  goal  lay,  our  way  was  untrodden,  un- 
known. The  thought  came  to  me  that  perhaps  we 
should  never  see  our  departing  friends.  With  it  eame 
a  pang  of  tenderness  for  the  loved  ones  I  had  left  behind 
me.  Although  our  progress  so  far  had  been  successful, 
and  half  the  distance  was  made,  dangers  un- 
known and  undreamed  of  existed  in  the  way  before  us. 
My  Eskimos  already  showed  anxiety — an  anxiety  which 
every  aboriginal  involuntarily  feels  when  land  disap- 
pears on  the  horizon.  Never  venturing  themselves  far 
onto  the  Polar  sea,  when  they  lose  sight  of  land  a  panic 
overcomes  them.  Before  leaving  us  one  of  the  depart- 
ing Eskimos  had  pointed  out  a  low-lying  cloud  to  the 
north  of  us.  "Noona"  (land),  he  said,  nodding  to  the 
others.  The  thought  occurred  to  me  that,  on  our  trip, 
I  could  take  advantage  of  the  mirages  and  low  clouds 
on  the  horizon  and  encourage  a  belief  in  a  constant  near- 
ness to  land,  thus  maintaining  their  courage  and  cheer.* 
Regrets  and  fears  were  not  long-lasting,  however, 

*On  their  return  to  Etah,  and  after  I  had  left  for  Upernavik,  my 
Eskimos,  questioned  by  Mr.  Peary,  who  was  anxious  to  secure  anything 
that  might  serve  towards  discrediting  me,  answered  innocently  that  they 
had  been  only  a  few  sleeps  from  land.  This  unwilling  and  naive  admission 
was  published  in  a  pretentious  statement,  the  purpose  of  which  was  to  cast 
doubt  on  my  claim.  Other  answers  of  my  Eskimos,  to  the  effect  that  I 
had  instruments  and  had  made  constant  observations,  it  is  curious  to  note, 
were  suppressed  by  Mr.  Peary  and  his  party  on  their  return.  Every 
insinuation  was  made  to  the  effect  that  I  had  had  no  instruments,  had  con- 
sequently taken  no  observations,  and  had,  therefore,  no  means  of  ascertain- 
ing the  Pole  even  had  I  wished  to  do  so. 


THE  TRANS-BOREAL  DASH  BEGINS 


207 


for  the  exigencies  of  our  problem  were  sufficiently  im- 
perative and  absorbing.  To  the  overcoming  of  these  we 
had  now  to  devote  our  entire  attention  and  strain  every 
fibre. 

We  had  now  advanced,  by  persistent  high-pressure 
efforts,  over  the  worst  possible  ice  conditions,  somewhat 
more  than  sixty  miles.  Of  the  9°  between  land's  end 
and  the  Pole,  we  had  covered  one ;  and  we  had  done  this 
without  using  the  pound  of  food  per  day  allotted  each  of 
us  out  of  the  eighty  days'  supply  transported. 


POLAR  BEAR 


OVER  THE  POLAR  SEA  TO  THE  BIG  LEAD 

WITH  TWO  ESKIMO  COMPANIONS,  THE  RACE  POLEWARD 
CONTINUES  OVER  ROUGH  AND  DIFFICULT  ICE — THE 
LAST  LAND  FADES  BEHIND — MIRAGES  LEAP  INTO 
BEING  AND  WEAVE  A  MYSTIC  SPELL — A  SWIRLING 
SCENE  OF  MOVING  ICE  AND  FANTASTIC  EFFECTS- 
STANDING  ON  A  HILL  OF  ICE,  A  BLACK,  WRITHING, 
SNAKY  CUT  APPEARS  IN  THE  ICE  BEYOND — THE  BIG 

LEAD A  NIGHT  OF  ANXIETY — FIVE  HUNDRED  MILES 

ALREADY  COVERED — FOUR  HUNDRED  TO  THE  POLE 

XIV 

To  EIGHTY-THIRD  PARALLEL 

Our  party,  thus  reduced  to  three,  went  onward. 
Although  the  isolation  was  more  oppressive,  there  were 
the  advantages  of  the  greater  comfort,  safety,  speed  and 
convenience  that  came  from  having  only  a  small  band. 
The  large  number  of  men  in  a  big  expedition  always 
increases  responsibilities  and  difficulties.  In  the  early 
part  of  a  Polar  venture  this  disadvantage  is  eliminated 
by  the  facilities  to  augment  supplies  by  the  game  en 
route  and  by  ultimate  advantages  of  the  law  of  the  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest.  But  after  the  last  supporting  sleds 
return,  the  men  are  bound  to  each  other  for  protection 
and  can  no  longer  separate.  A  disabled  or  unfitted 


OVER  POLAR  SEA  TO  BIG  LEAD  209 

dog  can  be  fed  to  his  companions,  but  an  injured  or 
weak  man  cannot  be  eaten  nor  left  alone  to  die.  An 
exploring  venture  is  only  as  strong  as  its  weakest  mem- 
ber, and  increased  numbers,  like  increased  links  in  a 
chain,  reduce  efficiency. 

Moreover,  personal  idiosyncrasies  and  inconven- 
iences always  shorten  a  day's  march.  And,  above  all,  a 
numerous  party  quickly  divides  into  cliques,  which  are 
always  opposed  to  each  other,  to  the  leader,  and  in- 
variably to  the  best  interests  of  the  problem  in  hand. 
With  but  two  savage  companions,  to  whom  this  arduous 
task  was  but  a  part  of  an  accustomed  life  of  frost,  I  did 
not  face  many  of  the  natural  personal  barriers  which  con- 
tributed to  the  failure  of  former  Arctic  expeditions. 

In  my  judgment,  when  you  double  a  Polar  party 
its  chances  for  success  are  reduced  one-half;  when  you 
divide  it,  strength  and  security  are  multiplied. 

We  had  been  traveling  about  two  and  one-half  miles 
per  hour.  By  making  due  allowances  for  detours  and 
halts  at  pressure  lines,  the  number  of  hours  traveled 
gave  us  a  fair  estimate  of  the  day's  distance.  Against 
this  the  pedometer  offered  a  check,  and  the  compass 
gave  the  course.  Thus,  over  blank  charts,  our  course 
was  marked. 

By  this  kind  of  dead  reckoning  our  position  on 
March  20  was:  Latitude,  82°  23';  Longitude,  95°  14'. 
A  study  of  our  location  seemed  to  indicate  that  we  had 
passed  beyond  the  zone  of  ice  crushed  by  the  influence 
of  land  pressure.  Behind  were  great  hummocks  and 
small  ice ;  ahead  was  a  cheerful  expanse  of  larger,  clearer 
fields,  offering  a  promising  highway. 

Our  destination  was  now  about  four  hundred  and 


210  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

sixty  miles  beyond.  Our  life,  with  its  pack  environ- 
ment, assumed  another  aspect.  Previously  we  per- 
mitted ourselves  some  luxuries.  A  pound  of  coal  oil 
and  a  good  deal  of  musk  ox  tallow  were  burned  each  day 
to  heat  the  igloo  and  to  cook  abundant  food.  Extra 
meals  were  served  when  occasion  called  for  them,  and 
for  each  man  there  had  been  all  the  food  and  drink  he 
desired..  If  the  stockings  or  the  mittens  were  wet  there 
was  fire  enough  to  dry  them  out.  All  of  this  had  now 
to  be  changed. 

Hereafter  there  was  to  be  a  short  daily  allowance 
of  food  and  fuel — one  pound  of  pemmican  a  day  for  the 
dogs,  about  the  same  for  the  men,  with  just  a  taste  of 
other  things.  Fortunately,  we  were  well  provided  with 
fresh  meat  for  the  early  part  of  the  race  by  the  lucky  run 
through  game  lands.  Because  of  the  need  of  fuel 
economy  we  now  cut  our  pemmican  with  an  axe.  Later 
it  split  the  axe. 

At  first  no  great  hardship  followed  our  changed 
routine.  We  filled  up  sufficiently  on  two  cold  meals 
daily  and  also  depended  on  superfluous  bodily  tissue. 
It  was  no  longer  possible  to  jump  on  the  sled  for  an 
occasional  breathing  spell,  as  we  had  done  along  the 
land. 

Such  a  journey  as  now  confronted  us  is  a  long- 
continued,  hard,  difficult,  sordid,  body-exhausting  thing. 
Each  day  some  problem  presents  some  peculiar  condi- 
tion of  the  ice  or  state  of  the  weather.  The  effort,  for 
instance,  to  form  some  shield  from  intense  cold  gives 
added  interest  to  the  game.  That  one  thing  after  an- 
other is  being  met,  with  always  the  anticipation  of  next 
day's  struggle,  adds  a  thrill  to  the  conquest,  spurs  one 


OVER  POLAR  SEA  TO  BIG  LEAD  211 

to  greater  and  ever  greater  feats,  and  really  constitues 
the  actual  victory  of  such  a  quest.  With  overloaded 
sleds  the  drivers  must  now  push  and  pull  at  them  to  aid 
the  dogs.  My  task  was  to  search  the  troubled  ice  for 
easy  routes,  cutting  away  here  and  there  with  the  ice-axe 
to  permit  the  passing  of  the  sleds. 

Finally  stripping  for  the  race,  man  and  dog  must 
walk  along  together  through  storms  and  frost  for  the 
elusive  goal.  Success  or  failure  must  depend  mostly 
upon  our  ability  to  transport  nourishment  and  to  keep 
up  the  muscular  strength  for  a  prolonged  period. 

As  we  awoke  on  the  morning  of  March  21  and 
peered  out  of  the  eye-port  of  the  igloo,  the  sun  edged 
along  the  northeast.  A  warm  orange  glow  suffused  the 
ice  and  gladdened  our  hearts.  The  temperature  was 
63°  below  zero,  Fahrenheit;  the  barometer  was  steady 
and  high.  There  was  almost  no  wind.  Not  a  cloud 
lined  the  dome  of  pale  purple  blue,  but  a  smoky  streak 
along  the  west  shortened  our  horizon  in  that  direction 
and  marked  a  lead  of  open  water. 

Our  breakfast  consisted  of  two  cups  of  tea,  a  watch- 
sized  biscuit,  a  chip  of  frozen  meat  and  a  boulder  of 
pemmican.  Creeping  out  of  our  bags,  our  shivering 
legs  were  pushed  through  bearskin  cylinders  which 
served  as  trousers.  We  worked  our  feet  into  frozen 
boots  and  then  climbed  into  fur  coats.  Next  we  kicked 
the  front  out  of  the  snowhouse  and  danced  about  to 
stimulate  heart  action. 

Quickly  the  camp  furnishings  were  tossed  on  the 
sleds  and  securely  lashed.  We  gathered  the  dog  traces 
into  the  drag  lines,  vigorously  snapped  the  long  whips, 
and  the  willing  creatures  bent  to  the  shoulder  straps. 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

The  sleds  groaned.  The  unyielding  snows  gave  a 
metallic  ring.  The  train  moved  with  a  cheerful  pace. 

"Am-my  noona  terronga  dosangwah"  (Perhaps 
land  will  be  out  of  sight  today) ,  we  said  to  one  another.* 
But  the  words  did  not  come  with  serious  intent.  In 
truth,  each  in  his  own  way  felt  keenly  that  we  were  leav- 
ing a  world  of  life  and  possible  comfort  for  one  of  tor- 
ment and  suffering.  Axel  Heiberg  Land,  to  the  south, 
was  already  only  a  dull  blue  haze,  while  Grant  Land,  on 
the  eastward,  was  making  fantastic  figures  of  its  peaks 
and  ice  walls.  The  ice  ran  in  waves  of  undulating  blue, 
shimmering  with  streams  of  gold,  before  us.  Behind, 
the  last  vestiges  of  jagged  land  rose  and  fell  like  marion- 
ettes dancing  a  wild  farewell.  Our  heart-pulls  were 
backward,  our  mental  kicks  were  forward. 

Until  now  this  strange  white  world  had  been  one 
of  grim  reality.  As  though  some  unseen  magician  had 
waved  his  wand,  it  was  suddenly  transformed  into  a 
land  of  magic.  Leaping  into  existence,  as  though  from 
realms  beyond  the  horizon,  huge  mirages  wove  a  web  of 
marvelous  delusional  pictures  about  the  horizon.  Peaks 
of  snow  were  transformed  into  volcanoes,  belching 
smoke ;  out  of  the  pearly  mist  rose  marvelous  cities  with 


*My  enemies  credit  me  with  a  journey  of  two  thousand  miles,  which 
is  double  Peary's  greatest  distance;  but  then,  to  deny  my  Polar  attain- 
ment, they  keep  me  sitting  here,  on  a  sterile  waste  of  ice,  for  three  months. 
Would  any  man  sit  down  there  and  shiver  in  idleness,  when  the  reachable 
glory  of  Polar  victory  was  on  one  side  and  the  get-at-able  gastronomic 
joy  of  game  land  on  the  other?  Only  a  crazy  man  would  do  that,  and 
we  were  too  busy  to  lose  our  mental  balance  at  that  time.  When  leg-force 
controls  human  destiny,  and  a  half-filled  stomach  clears  the  brain  for 
action,  for  a  long  time,  at  least,  insanity  is  very  remote.  Furthermore, 
the  Eskimo  boys  said  we  traveled  on  the  ice-pack  for  seven  moons,  and 
that  we  reached  a  place  where  the  sun  does  not  dip  at  night;  where  the 
day  and  night  shadows  were  of  equal  length.  Has  Mr.  Peary  reached  that 
point?  If  so,  neither  he  nor  his  Eskimos  have  noted  it. 


OVER  POLAR  SEA  TO  BIG  LEAD  213 

fairy-like  castles;  in  the  color-shot  clouds  waved  golden 
and  rose  and  crimson  pennants  from  pinnacles  and 
domes  of  mosaic-colored  splendor.  Huge  creatures, 
misshapen  and  grotesque,  writhed  along  the  horizon  and 
performed  amusing  antics. 

Beginning  now,  and  rarely  absent,  these  spectral 
denizens  of  the  North  accompanied  us  during  the  entire 
journey;  and  later,  when,  fagged  of  brain  and  sapped 
of  bodily  strength,  I  felt  my  mind  swimming  in  a  sea 
of  half -consciousness,  they  filled  me  almost  with  horror, 
impressing  me  as  the  monsters  one  sees  in  a  nightmare. 

At  every  breathing  spell  in  the  mad  pace  our  heads 
now  turned  to  land.  Every  look  was  rewarded  by  a 
new  prospect.  From  belching  volcanoes  to  smoking 
cities  of  modern  bustle,  the  mirages  gave  a  succession  of 
striking  scenes  which  filled  me  with  awed  and  marveling 
delight.  A  more  desolate  line  of  coast  could  not  be 
imagined.  Along  its  edge  ran  low  wind-swept  and 
wind-polished  mountains.  These  were  separated  by 
valleys  filled  with  great  depths  of  snow  and  glacial  ice. 

Looking  northward,  the  sky  line  was  clear  of  the 
familiar  pinnacles  of  icebergs.  In  the  immediate 
vicinity  many  small  bergs  were  seen ;  some  of  these  were 
grounded,  and  the  pack  thus  anchored  was  thrown  in 
huge  uplifts  of  pressure  lines  and  hummocks.  The  sea, 
as  is  thereby  determined,  is  very  shallow  for  a  long  dis- 
tance from  land. 

This  interior  accumulation  of  snow  moves  slowly  to 
the  sea,  where  it  forms  a  low  ice  wall,  a  glacier  of  the 
Malaspina  type.  Its  appearance  is  more  like  that  of 
heavy  sea  ice;  hence  the  name  of  the  paleocrystic  ice, 
fragments  from  this  glacier,  floebergs,  which,  seen  in 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Lincoln  Sea  and  resembling  old  floes,  were  supposed  to 
be  the  product  of  the  ancient  upbuilding  of  the  ice  of 
the  North  Polar  Sea. 

Snapping  our  whips  and  urging  the  dogs,  we  trav- 
eled until  late  in  the  afternoon,  mirages  constantly 
appearing  and  melting  about  us.  Now  the  land  sud- 
denly settled  downward  as  if  by  an  earthquake.  The 
pearly  glitter,  which  had  raised  and  magnified  it,  dark- 
ened. A  purple  fabric  fell  over  the  horizon  and  merged 
imperceptibly  into  the  lighter  purple  blue  of  the  upper 
skies.  We  saw  the  land,  however,  at  successive  periods 
for  several  days.  This  happened  whenever  the  atmos- 
phere was  in  the  right  condition  to  elevate  the  terrestrial 
contour  lines  by  refracting  sun  rays. 

Every  condition  favored  us  on  this  march.  The 
wind  was  not  strong  and  struck  us  at  an  angle,  permit- 
ting us  to  guard  our  noses  by  pushing  a  mitten  under 
our  hoods  or  by  raising  a  fur-clad  hand. 

We  had  not  been  long  in  the  field,  however,  when 
the  wind,  that  ever-present  dragon  guardian  of  the  un- 
seen northern  monarch's  demesne,  began  to  suck 
strength  from  our  bodies.  Shortly  before  "Grant  Land 
entirely  faded  the  monster  fawned  on  us  with  gentle 
breathing. 

The  snow  was  hard,  and  the  ice,  in  fairly  large 
fields  separated  by  pressure  lines,  offered  little  resist- 
ance. On  March  21,  at  the  end  of  a  forced  effort  of 
fourteen  hours,  the  register  indicated  a  progress  of 
twenty-nine  miles. 

Too  weary  to  build  an  igloo,  we  threw  ourselves 
thoughtlessly  upon  the  sleds  for  a  short  rest,  and  fell 
asleep.  I  was  awakened  from  my  fitful  slumber  by  a 


OVER  POLAR  SEA  TO  BIG  LEAD  215 

feeling  of  compression,  as  if  stifling  arms  hideously 
gripped  me.  It  was  the  wind.  I  breathed  with  diffi- 
culty. I  struggled  to  my  feet,  and  about  me  hissed  and 
wailed  the  dismal  sound.  It  wTas  a  sharp  warning  to  us 
that  to  sleep  without  the  shelter  of  an  igloo  would  prob- 
ably mean  death. 

On  the  heavy  floe  upon  which  we  rested  were  sev- 
eral large  hummocks.  To  the  lee  of  one  of  these  we 
found  suitable  snow  for  a  shelter. 

Lines  of  snowy  vapor  were  rushing  over  the  pack. 
The  wind  came  with  rapidly  increasing  force.  We 
erected  the  house,  however,  before  we  suffered  severely 
from  the  blast.  We  crept  into  it  out  of  the  storm  and 
nested  in  warm  furs. 

The  wind  blew  fiercely  throughout  the  night.  By 
the  next  morning,  March  22,  the  storm  had  eased  to 
a  steady,  light  breeze.  The  temperature  was  59°  below 
zero.  We  emerged  from  our  igloo  at  noon.  Although 
the  cheerless  gray  veil  had  been  swept  from  the  frigid 
dome  of  the  sky,  to  the  north  appeared  a  low  black  line 
over  a  pearly  cloud  which  gave  us  much  uneasiness. 
This  was  a  narrow  belt  of  "water-sky,"  which  indicated 
open  water  or  very  thin  ice  at  no  great  distance. 

The  upper  surface  of  Grant  Land  was  now  a  mere 
thin  pen  line  on  the  edge  of  the  horizon.  But  a  play  of 
land  clouds  above  it  attracted  the  eyes  to  the  last  known 
rocks  of  solid  earth.  We  now  felt  keenly  the  piercing 
cold  of  the  Polar  sea.  The  temperature  gradually  rose 
to  46°  F.  below  zero,  in  the  afternoon,  but  there  was 
a  deadly  chill  in  the  long  shadows  which  increased  with 
the  swing  of  the  lowering  sun. 

A  life-sapping  draught,  which  sealed  the  eyes  and 


216  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

bleached  the  nose,  still  hissed  over  the  frozen  sea.  We 
had  hoped  that  this  would  soften  with  the  midday  sun. 
Instead,  it  came  with  a  more  cutting  sharpness.  In  the 
teeth  of  the  wind  we  persistently  pursued  a  course 
slightly  west  of  north.  The  wind  was  slightly  north  of 
west.  It  struck  us  at  a  painful  angle  and  brought 
tears.  Our  moistened  lashes  quickly  froze  together  as 
we  winked,  and  when  we  rubbed  them  and  drew  apart 
the  lids  the  icicles  broke  the  tender  skin.  Our  breath 
froze  on  our  faces.  Often  we  had  to  pause,  uncover 
our  hands  and  apply  the  warm  palms  to  the  face  before 
it  was  possible  to  see. 

Every  minute  thus  lost  filled  me  with  impatience 
and  dismay.  Minutes  of  traveling  were  as  precious  as 
bits  of  gold  to  a  hoarding  miser. 

In  the  course  of  a  brief  time  our  noses  became 
tipped  with  a  white  skin  and  also  required  nursing.  My 
entire  face  was  now  surrounded  with  ice,  but  there  was 
no  help  for  it.  If  we  were  to  succeed  the  face  must  be 
bared  to  the  cut  of  the  elements.  So  we  must  suffer. 
We  continued,  urging  the  dogs  and  struggling  with  the 
wind  just  as  a  drowning  man  fights  for  life  in  a  storm 
at  sea. 

About  six  o'clock,  as  the  sun  crossed  the  west,  we 
reached  a  line  of  high-pressure  ridges.  Beyond  these 
the  ice  was  cut  into  smaller  floes  and  thrown  together 
into  ugly  irregularities.  According  to  my  surmises,  an 
active  pack  and  troubled  seas  could  not  be  far  away. 
The  water-sky  widened,  but  became  less  sharply  defined. 

We  laboriously  picked  a  way  among  hummocks  and 
pressure  lines  which  seemed  impossible  from  a  distance. 
Our  dogs  panted  with  the  strain ;  my  limbs  ached.  In  a 


OVER  POLAR  SEA  TO  BIG  LEAD  217 

few  hours  we  arrived  at  the  summit  of  an  unusual  uplift 
of  ice  blocks.  Looking  ahead,  my  heart  pained  as  if  in 
the  grip  of  an  iron  hand.  My  hopes  sank  within  me. 
Twisting  snake-like  between  the  white  field,  and  sepa- 
rating the  packs,  was  a  tremendous  cut  several  miles 
wide,  which  seemed  at  the  time  to  bar  all  further  prog- 
ress. It  was  the  Big  Lead,  that  great  river  separating 
the  land-adhering  ice  from  the  vast  grinding  fields  of 
the  central  pack  beyond,  at  which  many  heroic  men  be- 
fore me  had  stopped.  I  felt  the  dismay  and  heartsick- 
ness  of  all  of  them  within  me  now.  The  wind,  blowing 
with  a  vengeful  wickedness,  laughed  sardonically  in  my 
ears. 

Of  course  we  had  our  folding  canvas  boat  on  the 
sleds.  But  in  this  temperature  of  48°  below  zero  I  knew 
no  craft  could  be  lowered  into  water  without  fatal  re- 
sults. All  of  the  ice  about  was  firmly  cemented  together, 
and  over  it  we  made  our  way  toward  the  edge  of  the 
water  line. 

Passing  through  pressure  lines,  over  smaller  and 
more  troublesome  fields,  we  reached  the  shores  of  the 
Big  Lead.  We  had,  by  two  encouraging  marches,  cov- 
ered fifty  miles.  The  first  hundred  miles  of  our  journey 
on  the  Polar  pack  had  been  covered.  The  Pole  was 
four  hundred  miles  beyond! 

Camp  was  pitched  on  a  secure  old  ice  field.  Cut- 
ting through  huge  ice  cliffs,  the  dark  crack  seemed  like 
a  long  river  winding  between  palisades  of  blue  crystal. 
A  thin  sheet  of  ice  had  already  spread  over  the  mysteri- 
ous deep.  On  its  ebony  mirrored  surface  a  profusion  of 
fantastic  frost  crystals  arranged  themselves  in  bunches 
resembling  white  and  saffron-colored  flowers. 


218  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Through  the  apertures  of  this  young  ice  dark 
vapors  rose  like  steam  through  a  screen  of  porous  fabrics 
and  fell  in  feathers  of  snow  along  the  sparkling  shores. 
After  partaking  of  a  boulder  of  pemmican,  E-tuk-i- 
shook  went  east  and  I  west  to  examine  the  lead  of  water 
for  a  safe  crossing.  There  were  several  narrow  places, 
while  here  and  there  floes  which  had  been  adrift  in  the 
lead  were  now  fixed  by  young  ice.  Ah-we-lah  remained 
behind  to  make  our  snowhouse  comfortable. 

For  a  long  time  this  huge  separation  in  the  pack 
had  been  a  mystery  to  me.  At  first  sight  there  seemed 
to  be  no  good  reason  for  its  existence.  Peary  had  found 
a  similar  break  north  of  Robeson  Channel.  It  was 
likely  that  what  we  saw  was  an  extension  of  the  same, 
following  at  a  distance  the  general  trend  of  the  north- 
ernmost land  extension. 

This  is  precisely  what  one  finds  on  a  smaller  scale 
when  two  ice  packs  come  together.  Here  the  pack  of 
the  central  polar  sea  meets  the  land-adhering  ice. 
The  movement  of  the  land  pack  is  intermittent  and 
usually  along  the  coast.  The  shallows,  grounded  ice 
and  projecting  points  interfere  with  a  steady  drift.  The 
movement  of  the  central  pack  is  quite  constant,  in 
almost  every  direction,  the  tides,  currents  and  winds 
each  giving  momentum  to  the  floating  mass.  The  lead 
is  thus  the  breaking  line  between  the  two  bodies  of  ice. 
It  widens  as  the  pack  separates,  arid  narrows  or  widens 
with  an  easterly  or  westerly  drift,  according  to  the 
pressure  of  the  central  pack.  Early  in  the  season,  when 
the  pack  is  crevassed  and  not  elastic,  it  is  probably  wide ; 
later,  as  the  entire  sea  of  ice  becomes  active,  it  may  dis- 
appear or  shift  to  a  line  nearer  the  land. 


OVER  POLAR  SEA  TO  BIG  LEAD  219 

In  low  temperature  new  ice  forms  rapidly.  This 
offers  an  obstruction  to  the  drift  of  the  old  ice.  As  the 
heavy  central  pack  is  pressed  against  the  unyielding 
land  pack  the  small  ice  is  ground  to  splinters,  and  even 
heavy  floes  are  crushed.  This  reduced  mass  of  small 
ice  is  pasted  and  cemented  along  the  shores  of  the  Big 
Lead,  leaving  a  broad  band  of  troublesome  surface  as 
a  serious  barrier  to  sled  travel.  It  seems  quite  probable 
that  this  lead,  or  a  condition  similar  to  it,  extends  en- 
tirely around  the  Polar  sea  as  a  buffer  between  the  land 
and  the  middle  pack. 

In  exploring  the  shore  line,  a  partially  bridged 
place  was  found  about  a  mile  from  camp,  but  the  young 
ice  was  too  elastic  for  a  safe  track.  The  temperature, 
however,  fell  rapidly  with  the  setting  sun,  and  the  wind 
was  just  strong  enough  to  sweep  off  the  heated  vapors. 
I  knew  better  atmospheric  condition  could  not  be 
afforded  quickly  to  thicken  the  young  ice. 

Returning  to  camp  that  night,  we  surprised  our 
stomachs  by  a  little  frozen  musk  ox  tenderloin  and 
tallow,  the  greatest  delicacy  in  our  possession.  Then 
we  retired.  Ice  was  our  pillow.  Ice  was  our  bed.  A 
dome  of  snow  above  us  held  off  the  descending  liquid  air 
of  frost.  Outside  the  wind  moaned.  Shudderingly, 
the  deep  howl  of  the  dogs  rolled  over  the  ice.  Lying  on 
the  sheeted  deep,  beneath  my  ears  I  heard  the  noise  of 
the  moving,  grinding,  crashing  pack.  It  sounded  terri- 
fyingly  like  a  distant  thunder  of  guns.  I  could  not 
sleep.  Sick  anxiety  filled  me.  Could  we  cross  the 
dreadful  river  on  the  morrow?  Would  the  ice  freeze? 
Or  might  the  black  space  not  hopelessly  widen  during 
the  night?  I  lay  awake,  shivering  with  cold.  I  felt 


220 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 


within  me  the  blank  loneliness  of  the  thousands  of  deso- 
late miles  about  me. 

One  hundred  miles  of  the  unknown  had  been  cov- 
ered; five  hundred  miles  of  the  journey  from  our  winter 
camp  were  behind  us.  Beyond,  to  the  goal,  lay  four 
hundred  unknown  miles.  Nothing  dearly  desired  of 
man  ever  seemed  so  far  away. 


ESKIMO  TORCH 


CROSSING  MOVING  SEAS  OF  ICE 

CROSSING    THE    LEAD THE    THIN     ICE    HEAVES    LIKE    A 

SHEET  OF  RUBBER — CREEPING  FORWARD  CAU- 
TIOUSLY, THE  TWO  DANGEROUS  MILES  ARE  COVERED 
— BOUNDING  PROGRESS  MADE  OVER  IMPROVING  ICE — 
THE  FIRST  HURRICANE — DOGS  BURIED  AND  FROZEN 
INTO  MASSES  IN  DRIFTS  OF  SNOW — THE  ICE  PARTS 

THROUGH  THE  IGLOO WAKING  TO  FIND  ONE^S  SELF 

FALLING  INTO  THE  COLD  SEA. 

XV 

THE  FIRST  STEPS  OVER  THE  GRINDING  CENTRAL  PACK 

111  at  ease  and  shivering,  we  rose  from  our  crystal 
berths  on  March  23  and  peeped  out  of  a  pole-punched 
porthole.  A  feeble  glow  of  mystic  color  came  from 
everywhere  at  once.  Outside,  toward  a  sky  of  dull  pur- 
ple, columns  of  steam-like  vapor  rose  from  open  ice 
water,  resembling  vapors  from  huge  boiling  cauldrons. 
We  sank  with  chattering  teeth  to  our  cheerless  beds  and 
quivered  with  the  ghostly  unreality  of  this  great  vibrat- 
ing unknown. 

Long  before  the  suppressed  incandescent  night 
changed  to  the  prism  sparkle  of  day  we  were  out  seek- 
ing a  way  over  the  miles  of  insecure  young  ice  sepa- 
rating us  from  the  central  pack.  On  our  snowshoes, 
with  an  easy  tread,  spread  feet  and  with  long  life  lines 


222  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

tied  to  each  other,  we  ventured  to  the  opposite  shores  of 
that  dangerous  spread  of  young  ice.  Beyond,  the  central 
pack  glittered  in  moving  lines  and  color,  like  quick- 
silver shot  with  rainbow  hues. 

The  Big  Lead  was  mottled  and  tawny  colored,  like 
the  skin  of  a  great  constrictor.  As  we  stood  and  looked 
over  its  broad  expanse  to  the  solid  floes,  two  miles  off, 
there  came  premonitions  to  me  of  impending  danger. 
Would  the  ice  bear  us?  If  it  broke,  and  the  life  line 
was  not  quickly  j  erked,  our  fate  would  almost  certainly 
be  sure  death.  Sontag,  the  astronomer  of  Dr.  Hay's 
Expedition,  thus  lost  his  life.  Many  others  have  in  like 
manner  gone  to  the  bottomless  deep.  On  two  occasions 
during  the  previous  winter  I  had  thus  gone  through,  but 
the  life  line  had  saved  me.  What  would  be  our  fate 
here?  But,  whatever  the  luck,  we  must  cross.  I  knew 
delay  was  fatal,  for  at  any  time  a  very  light  wind  or  a 
change  in  the  drift  might  break  the  new  ice  and  delay 
us  long  enough  to  set  the  doom  of  failure  upon  our 
entire  venture. 

Every  precaution  was  taken  to  safeguard  our  lives. 
The  most  important  problem  was  to  distribute  the 
weight  so  that  all  of  it  would  not  be  brought  to  bear  on 
a  small  area.  We  separated  our  dog  teams  from  the 
sleds,  holding  to  long  lines  which  were  fastened  about 
our  bodies  and  also  to  the  sleds.  The  sleds  were  hitched 
to  each  other  by  another  long  line. 

With  bated  breath  and  my  heart  thumping,  I  ad- 
vanced at  the  end  of  a  long  line  which  was  attached  to 
the  first  sled,  and  picked  my  way  through  the  crushed 
and  difficult  ice  along  shore.  With  the  life-saving 
line  fastened  to  each  one  of  us,  we  were  insured  against 


CROSSING  MOVING  SEAS  OF  ICE  223 

possible  dangers  as  well  as  forethought  could  provide. 
Running  from  sled  to  sled,  from  dog  to  dog,  and  man 
to  man,  it  would  afford  a  pulling  chance  for  life  should 
anyone  break  through  the  ice.  It  seemed  unlikely  that 
the  ice  along  the  entire  chain  would  break  at  once,  but 
its  cracking  under  the  step  of  one  of  us  seemed  probable. 

I  knew,  as  I  gently  placed  my  foot  upon  the  thin 
yellowish  surface,  that  at  any  moment  I  might  sink  into 
an  icy  grave.  Yet  a  spirit  of  bravado  thrilled  my  heart. 
I  felt  the  grip  of  danger,  and  also  that  thrill  of  exulta- 
tion which  accompanies  its  terror. 

Gently  testing  the  ice  before  me  with  the  end  of 
my  axe,  with  spread  legs,  on  snowshoes,  with  long,  slid- 
ing steps,  I  slowly  advanced. 

A  dangerous  cracking  sound  pealed  in  every  direc- 
tion under  my  feet.  The  Eskimos  followed.  With 
every  tread  the  thin  sheet  ice  perceptibly  sank  under 
me,  and  waved,  in  small  billows,  like  a  sheet  of  rubber. 

Stealthily,  as  though  we  were  trying  to  filch  some 
victory,  we  crept  forward.  We  rocked  on  the  heaving 
ice  as  a  boat  on  waves  of  water.  Now  and  then  we 
stepped  upon  sheets  of  thicker  ice,  and  hastily  went  for- 
ward with  secure  footing.  None  of  us  spoke  during  the 
dangerous  crossing.  I  heard  distinctly  the  panting  of 
the  dogs  and  the  patter  of  thei?  feet.  We  covered  the 
two  miles  safely,  yet  our  snail-like  progress  seemed  to 
cover  many  anxious  years. 

I  cannot  describe  the  exultation  which  filled  me 
when  the  crossing  was  accomplished.  It  seemed  as 
though  my  goal  itself  were  stretching  toward  me.  I  ex- 
perienced a  sense  of  unbounded  victory.  I  could  have 
cheered  with  joy.  Intoxicated  with  it,  I  and  my  com- 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

panions  leaped  forward,  new  cheer  quickening  our  steps. 
The  dangers  to  come  seemed  less  formidable  now,  and 
as  We  journeyed  onward  it  was  the  mastering  of  these, 
as  did  our  accomplishment  in  crossing  the  Big  Lead, 
which  gave  us  a  daily  incentive  to  continue  our  way  and 
ever  to  apply  brain  and  muscle  to  the  subduing  of  even 
greater  difficulties  with  zest. 

It  was  in  doing  this  that  the  real  thrill,  the  real 
victory — the  only  thrill  and  victory,  indeed — of  reach- 
ing the  North  Pole  lay.  The  attaining  of  this  mythical 
spot  did  not  then,  and  does  not  now,  seem  in  itself  to 
mean  anything;  I  did  not  then,  and  do  not  now,  con- 
sider it  the  treasure-house  of  any  great  scientific  secrets. 
The  only  thing  to  be  gained  from  reaching  the  Pole,  the 
triumph  of  it,  the  lesson  in  the  accomplishment,  is  that 
man,  by  brain  power  and  muscle  energy,  can  subdue  the 
most  terrific  forces  of  a  blind  nature  if  he  is  determined 
enough,  courageous  enough,  and  undauntedly  persistent 
despite  failure. 

On  my  journey  northward  I  felt  the  ever  constant 
•presence  of  those  who  had  died  in  trying  to  reach  the 
goal  before  me.  There  were  times  when  I  felt  a  startling 
nearness  to  them — a  sense  like  that  one  has  of  the  prox- 
imity of  living  beings  in  an  adjoining  room.  I  felt  the 
goad  of  their  hopes  within  me;  I  felt  the  steps  of  their 
dead  feet  whenever  my  feet  touched  the  ice.  I  felt  their 
unfailing  determination  revive  me  when  I  was  tempted 
to  turn  back  in  the  days  of  inhuman  suffering  that  were 
to  come.  I  felt  that  I,  the  last  man  to  essay  this  goal, 
must  for  them  justify  humanity;  that  I  must  crown  three 
centuries  of  human  effort  with  success. 

With  the  perilous  Big  Lead  behind  us,  a  bounding 


CROSSING  MOVING  SEAS  OF  ICE  225 

course  was  set  to  reach  the  eighty-fifth  parallel  on  the 
ninety-seventh  meridian.  What  little  movement  was 
noted  on  the  ice  had  been  easterly.  To  allow  for  this 
drift  we  aimed  to  keep  a  line  slightly  west  of  the  Pole. 

We  bounded  northward  joyously.  Under  our 
speeding  feet  the  ice  reverberated  and  rumbled  with  the 
echo  of  far-away  splitting  and  crashing. 

The  sun  sank  into  a  haze  like  mother-of-pearl.  Our 
pathway  glowed  with  purple  and  orange.  We  paused 
only  when  the  pale  purple  blue  of  night  darkened  the 
pack. 

Starting  forward  in  the  afternoon  of  March  24, 
we  crossed  many  small  floes  with  low-pressure  lines 
separated  by  narrow  belts  of  new  ice.  Our  speed  in- 
creased. At  times  we  could  hardly  keep  pace  with  our 
dogs.  The  temperature  rose  to  forty-one  below  zero. 
The  western  sky  cleared  slightly.  Along  the  horizon 
remained  misty  appearances  resembling  land.  This 
low-lying  fog  continued  during  our  entire  second  hun- 
dred miles  over  the  Polar  basin.  Under  it  we  daily 
expected  to  see  new  land. 

But  Nature  did  not  satisfy  our  curiosity  for  a  long 
time.  Both  Ah-we-lah  and  E-tuk-i-shook  were  sure 
of  a  constant  nearness  to  land.  Because  of  the  native 
panic  out  of  its  reassuring  sight,  I  encouraged  this  belief, 
as  I  did  concerning  every  other  possible  sign  of  land 
further  northward.  I  knew  that  only  by  encouraging  a 
delusion  of  nearness  to  land  could  I  urge  them  ever 
farther  in  the  face  of  the  hardships  that  must  inevitably 
come. 

An  altitude  of  the  sun  at  noon  on  March  24  gave 
our  position  as  latitude  83°  31'.  The  longitude  was 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

estimated  at  96°  27'.  The  land  clouds  of  Grant  Land 
were  still  visible.  The  low  bank  of  mist  in  the  west 
occasionally  brightened.  For  a  while  I  believed  this  to 
be  an  indication  of  Crocker  Land. 

Until  midday  I  took  observations  and  endeavored 
to  study  the  appearances  of  land.  Our  dogs  sniffed  the 
air  as  if  scenting  game.  After  a  diligent  search,  one 
seal  blow-hole  was  located,  and  later  we  saw  an  old  bear 
track.  No  algse  or  other  small  life  was  detected  in  the 
water  between  the  ice  crevices.  At  the  Big  Lead  a  few 
algse  had  been  gathered.  But  here  the  sea  seemed 
sterile.  Signs  of  seal  and  bear,  however,  were  encour- 
aging to  us  as  possible  future  food  supply.  In  return- 
ing, I  calculated  the  season  would  be  more  advanced, 
and  it  was  possible  that  life  might  move  northward,  thus 
permitting  an  extension  of  the  time  allowance  of  our 
rations. 

Although  the  heat  of  the  sun  was  barely  felt,  its 
rays  began  to  pierce  our  eyes  with  painful  effects.  Re- 
flected from  the  spotless  surface  of  the  storm-driven 
snows,  the  bright  light  could  not  long  be  endured  with- 
out some  protection,  even  by  the  Eskimos.  Now  came 
the  time  to  test  a  simple  expedient  that  had  occurred  to 
me  at  Annoatok.  Amber-colored  goggles,  darkened  or 
smoked  glasses  and  ordinary  automobile  goggles  had  all 
been  tried  with  indifferent  results.  They  failed  for  one 
reason  or  another,  mostly  because  of  an  insufficient 
range  of  vision  or  because  of  a  faulty  construction  that 
made  it  impossible  to  proceed  more  than  a  few  minutes 
without  removing  the  accumulated  condensation  within 
them.  At  Annoatok  I  had  made  amber-colored  gog- 
gles from  the  glass  of  my  photographic  supplies.  By 


CROSSING  MOVING  SEAS  OF  ICE 

adjusting  them  I  soon  found  they  were  a  priceless  dis- 
covery. They  entirely  eliminated  one  of  the  greatest 
torments  of  Arctic  travel. 

While  effectually  screening  the  active  rays  that 
would  have  injured  the  eye,  these  amber  glasses  at  the 
same  time  possessed  the  inestimable  advantage  of  not 
interfering  with  the  range  of  vision. 

Relieved  of  the  snow  glare,  the  eye  was  better  en- 
abled to  see  distant  objects  than  through  field  glasses. 
It  is  frequently  extremely  difficult  to  detect  icy  surface 
irregularities  on  cloudy  days.  The  amber  glass  dis- 
pelled this  trouble  perfectly,  enabling  the  eye  to  search 
carefully  every  nook  and  crevice  through  the  vague  in- 
candescence which  blinds  the  observer  in  hazy  weather. 
The  glasses  did  not  reduce  the  quantity  of  light,  as  do 
smoked  glasses,  but  the  quality;  the  actinic  rays,  which 
do  the  greatest  harm,  were  eliminated.  We  were  not 
only  relieved  of  the  pain  and  fatigue  of  eye  strain,  but 
the  color  imparted  a  touch  of  cheer  and  warmth  to  our 
chilled  blue  horizon.  The  usual  snow  goggles  add  to 
the  ugly  gray-blue  of  the  frozen  seas,  which  alone  sends 
frosty  waves  through  the  nervous  fibers. 

So  thoroughly  delighted  were  we  with  these  goggles 
that  later  we  wore  them  even  in  igloos  while  asleep,  with 
the  double  object  of  screening  the  strong  light  which 
passes  through  the  eyelids  and  of  keeping  the  forehead 
warm. 

On  our  march  in  the  early  part  of  the  afternoon  of 
the  24th  the  weather  proved  good.  The  ice,  though 
newly  crevassed,  improved  as  we  advanced.  The  late 
start  spread  our  day's  work  close  to  the  chill  of  mid- 
night. When  we  started  the  wind  blew  kindly.  With 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

glad  hearts  we  forged  forward  without  delays.  On  the 
ice  I  heard  the  soft  patter  of  swift  dog  feet  and  the  dash- 
ing, cutting  progress  of  the  sleds.  As  a  scene  viewed 
from  a  carousel,  the  field  of  ice  swept  around  me  in  our 
dizzy,  twisting  progress.  We  swept  resistlessly  onward 
for  twenty-three  miles.  As  we  had  taken  a  zigzag 
course  to  follow  smooth  ice,  I  therefore  recorded  only 
eighteen  miles  to  our  credit. 

The  night  was  beautiful.  The  sun  sank  into  a  pur- 
ple haze.  Soon,  in  the  magic  of  the  atmosphere, 
appeared  three  suns  of  prismatic  colors.  These  settled 
slowly  into  the  frozen  sea  and  disappeared  behind  that 
persistent  haze  of  obscuring  mist  which  always  rests  over 
the  pack  when  the  sun  is  low.  During  the  night  a  nar- 
row band  of  orange  was  flung  like  a  ribbon  across  the 
northern  skies.  The  pack  surface  glowed  with  varying 
shades  of  violet,  lilac  and  pale  purplish  blue.  Many 
such  splendid  sights  are  to  be  constantly  seen  in  the 
Arctic.  Although  I  reveled  in  it  now,  the  time  was 
soon  to  come  when  weariness  and  hunger  numbed  my 
faculties  into  a  dreary  torpor  in  which  the  splendor  was 
not  seen. 

Signs  appeared  of  a  gale  from  the  west  before  we 
were  quite  ready  to  camp.  Little  sooty  clouds  with 
ragged  edges  suddenly  began  to  cover  the  sky,  scurrying 
at  an  alarming  pace.  Beyond  us  a  huge  smoky  volume 
of  cloud  blackened  the  pearly  glitter. 

Suitable  camping  ice  was  sought.  In  the  course  of 
an  hour  we  built  an  igloo.  We  made  the  structure 
stronger  than  usual  on  account  of  the  threatening  storm. 
We  constructed  double  tiers  of  snow  blocks  to  the  wind- 
ward. A  little  water  was  thrown  over  the  top  to  cement 


CROSSING  MOVING  SEAS  OF  ICE  229 

the  blocks.  We  fastened  the  dogs  to  the  lee  of  hum- 
mocks. The  sleds  were  securely  lashed  and  fastened  to 
the  ice. 

We  expected  a  hurricane,  and  had  not  to  wait  to 
taste  its  fury.  Before  we  were  at  rest  in  our  bags  the 
wind  lashed  the  snows  with  a  force  inconceivable.  With 
rushing  drift,  the  air  thickened.  Dogs  and  sleds  in  a 
few  minutes  were  buried  under  banks  of  snow  and  great 
drifts  encircled  the  igloo.  The  cemented  blocks  of  our 
dome  withstood  the  sweep  of  the  blast  well.  Yet,  now 
and  then,  small  holes  were  burrowed  through  the  snow 
wall  by  the  sharp  wind.  Drift  entered  and  covered  us. 
I  lay  awake  for  hours.  I  felt  the  terrible  oppression  of 
that  raging,  life-sucking  vampire  force  sweeping  over 
the  desolate  world.  Disembodied  things — the  souls  of 
those,  perhaps,  who  had  perished  here — seemed  fren- 
ziedly  calling  me  in  the  wind.  I  felt  under  me  the  surge 
of  the  sweeping,  awful  sea.  I  felt  the  desolation  of  this 
stormy  world  within  my  shuddering  soul ;  but,  withal,  I 
throbbed  with  a  determination  to  assert  the  supremacy 
of  living  man  over  these  blind,  insensate  forces ;  to  prove 
that  the  living  brain  and  palpitating  muscle  of  a  finite 
though  conscious  creature  could  vanquish  a  hostile 
Nature  which  creates  to  kill.  I  burned  to  justify  those 
who  had  died  here;  to  fulfill  by  proxy  their  hopes;  to 
set  their  calling  souls  at  rest.  The  storm  waked  in  me 
an  angry,  challenging  determination. 

Early  in  the  morning  of  the  25th  the  storm  ceased 
as  suddenly  as  it  had  come.  A  stillness  followed  which 
was  appalling.  It  seemed  as  if  the  storm  had  heard  my 
thoughts  and  paused  to  contemplate  some  more  dreadful 
onslaught.  The  dogs  began  to  howl  desperately,  as  if 


230  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

attacked  by  a  bear.  We  rushed  out  of  our  igloo,  seek- 
ing guns.  There  was  no  approaching  creature.  It 
was,  however,  a  signal  of  serious  distress  that  we  had 
heard.  The  dogs  were  in  acute  misery.  The  storm- 
driven  snows  had  buried  and  bound  them  in  unyielding 
ice.  They  had  partly  uncovered  themselves.  United 
by  trace  and  harness,  they  were  imprisoned  in  frozen 
masses.  Few  of  them  could  even  rise  and  stretch.  They 
were  in  severe  torment. 

We  hurriedly  freed  their  traces  and  beat  the 
cemented  snows  from  their  furs  with  sticks.  Released, 
they  leaped  about  gladly,  their  cries,  curling  tails  and 
pointed  noses  telling  of  gratitude.  While  we  danced 
about,  stretching  our  limbs  and  rubbing  our  hands  to  get 
up  circulation,  the  sun  rose  over  the  northern  blue,  flush- 
ing the  newly  driven  snows  with  warm  tones.  The  tem- 
perature during  the  storm  had  risen  to  only  26°  below, 
but  soon  the  thermometer  sank  rapidly  below  40°.  The 
west  was  still  smoky  and  the  weather  did  not  seem  quite 
settled.  As  it  was  still  too  early  to  start,  we  again 
slipped  into  the  bags  and  sought  quiet  slumber. 

As  yet  the  dreadful  insomnia  which  was  to  rob  me 
of  rest  on  my  journey  had  not  come,  and  I  slept  with  the 
blissful  soundness  of  a  child.  I  must  have  been  asleep 
several  hours,  when,  of  a  sudden,  I  opened  my  eyes. 

Terror  gripped  my  heart.  Loud  explosive  noises 
reverberated  under  my  head.  It  seemed  as  though 
bombs  were  torn  asunder  in  the  depths  of  the  cold  sea 
beneath  me.  I  lay  still,  wondering  if  I  were  dreaming. 
The  sounds  echoingly  died  away.  Looking  about  the 
igloo,  I  detected  nothing  unusual.  I  saw  Ah-we-lah 
and  E-tuk-i-shook  staring  at  me  with  wide-open  fright- 


CROSSING  MOVING  SEAS  OF  ICE         .     231 

ened  eyes.  I  arose  and  peeped  through  the  eye  port. 
The  fields  of  ice  without  reflected  the  warm  light  of  the 
rising  sun  in  running  waves  of  tawny  color.  The  ice 
was  undisturbed.  An  unearthly  quiet  prevailed.  Con- 
cluding that  the  ice  was  merely  cracking  under  the  sud- 
den change  of  temperature,  in  quite  the  usual  harmless 
manner,  I  turned  over  again,  reassuring  my  companions, 
and  promptly  fell  asleep. 

Out  of  the  blankness  of  sleep  I  suddenly  wakened 
again.  Half-dazed,  I  heard  beneath  me  a  series  of 
echoing,  thundering  noises.  I  felt  the  ice  floor  on  which 
I  lay  quivering.  I  experienced  the  sudden  giddiness 
one  feels  on  a  tossing  ship  at  sea.  In  the  flash  of  a  sec- 
ond I  saw  Ah-we-lah  leap  to  his  feet.  In  the  same  dizzy 
instant  I  saw  the  dome  of  the  snowhouse  open  above  me ; 
I  caught  a  vision  of  the  gold-streaked  sky.  My  instinct 
at  the  moment  was  to  leap.  I  think  I  tried  to  rise,  when 
suddenly  everything  seemed  lifted  from  under  me ;  I  ex- 
perienced the  suffocating  sense  of  falling,  and  next,  with 
a  spasm  of  indescribable  horror,  felt  about  my  body  a 
terrific  tightening  pressure  like  that  of  a  chilled  and  clos- 
ing shell  of  steel,  driving  the  life  and  breath  from  me. 

In  an  instant  it  was  clear  what  had  happened.  A 
crevasse  had  suddenly  opened  through  our  igloo, 
directly  under  the  spot  whereon  I  slept ;  and  I,  a  helpless 
creature  in  a  sleeping  bag,  with  tumbling  snow  blocks 
and  ice  and  snow  crashing  about  and  crushing  me,  with 
the  temperature  48°  below  zero,  was  floundering  in  the 
opening  sea ! 


LAND  DISCOVERED 

FIGHTING  PROGRESS  THROUGH  CUTTING  COLD  AND  TER- 
RIFIC STORMS LIFE  BECOMES  A  MONOTONOUS  ROU- 
TINE OF  HARDSHIP THE  POLE  INSPIRES  WITH  ITS 

REISISTLESS   LURE NEW   LAND   DISCOVERED   BEYOND 

THE  EIGHTY-FOURTH   PARALLEL MORE  THAN   TWO 

HUNDRED  MILES  FROM  SVARTEVOEG THE  FIRST  SIX 

HUNDRED  MILES  COVERED 

XVI 

THREE  HUNDRED  MILES  TO  THE  APEX  OF  THE  WORLD 

I  think  I  was  about  to  swoon  when  I  felt  hands 
beneath  my  armpits  and  heard  laughter  in  my  ears. 
With  an  adroitness  such  as  only  these  natives  possess, 
my  two  companions  were  dragging  me  from  the  water. 
And  while  I  lay  panting  on  the  ice,  recovering 
from  my  fright,  I  saw  them  expeditiously  rescue  our 
possessions. 

It  seemed  that  all  this  happened  so  quickly  that 
I  had  really  been  in  the  water  only  a  few  moments.  My 
two  companions  saw  the  humor  of  the  episode  and 
laughed  heartily.  Although  I  had  been  in  the  water 
only  a  brief  time,  a  sheet  of  ice  surrounded  my  sleeping 
bag.  Fortunately,  however,  the  reindeer  skin  was 
found  to  be  quite  dry  when  the  ice  was  beaten  off.  The 
experience,  while  momentarily  terrifying,  was  instruc- 


LAND  DISCOVERED  233 

tive,  for  it  taught  us  the  danger  of  spreading  ice,  espe- 
cially in  calms  following  storms. 

Gratitude  filled  my  heart.  I  fully  realized  how 
narrow  had  been  the  escape  of  all  of  us.  Had  we  slept 
a  few  seconds  longer  we  should  all  have  disappeared  in 
the  opening  crevasse.  The  hungry  Northland  would 
again  have  claimed  its  human  sacrifice. 

The  ice  about  was  much  disturbed.  Numerous 
black  lines  of  water  opened  on  every  side;  from  these 
oozed  jets  of  frosty,  smoke-colored  vapor.  The  differ- 
ence between  the  temperature  of  the  sea  and  that  of  the 
air  was  76°.  With  this  contrast,  the  open  spots  of  ice- 
water  appeared  to  be  boiling. 

Anxious  to  move  along,  away  from  the  troubled 
angle  of  ice,  our  usual  breakfast  was  simplified.  Melt- 
ing some  snow,  we  drank  the  icy  liquid  as  an  eye-opener, 
and  began  our  ration  of  a  half-pound  boulder  of  pem- 
mican.  But  with  cold  fingers,  blue  lips  and  no  possible 
shelter,  the  stuff  was  unusually  hard.  To  warm  up,  we 
prepared  the  sleds.  Under  our  lashes  the  dogs  jumped 
into  harness  with  a  bound.  The  pemmican,  which  we 
really  found  too  hard  to  eat,  had  to  be  first  broken  into 
pieces  with  an  axe.  We  ground  it  slowly  with  our 
molars  as  we  trudged  along.  Our  teeth  chattered  while 
the  stomach  was  thus  being  fired  with  durable  f  uel%. 

As  we  advanced  the  ice  improved  to  some  extent. 
With  a  little  search  safe  crossings  were  found  over  new 
crevices.  A  strong  westerly  wind  blew  piercingly  cold. 

Good  progress  was  made,  but  we  did  not  forget  at 
any  time  that  we  were  invading  the  forbidden  domains 
of  a  new  polar  environment. 

Henceforth,  one  day  was  to  be  much  like  another. 


234  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Beyond  the  eighty-third  parallel  life  is  devoid  of  any 
pleasure.  The  intense  objective  impressions  of  cold 
and  hunger  assailing  the  body  rob  even  the  mind  of  in- 
spiration and  exhilaration.  Even  the  best  day  of  sun 
and  gentle  wind  offers  no  balm. 

One  awakes  realizing  the  wind 'has  abated  and  sees 
the  cheerless  sun  veering  about  the  side  of  the  ice  shelter. 
One  kicks  the  victim  upon  whom,  that  morning,  duty  has 
fixed  the  misfortune  to  be  up  first — for  we  tried  to  be 
equals  in  sharing  the  burdens  of  life.  And  upon  him 
to  whose  lot  falls  this  hardship  there  is  a  loss  of  two 
hours'  repose.  He  chops  ice,  fills  the  kettles,  lights 
the  fire,  and  probably  freezes  his  fingers  in  doing  so. 
Then  he  wiggles  back  into  his  bag,  warms  his  icy  hands 
on  the  bare  skin  of  his  own  stomach ;  or,  if  he  is  in  a  two- 
man  bag,  and  the  other  fellow  is  awake,  Arctic  courtesy 
permits  the  icy  hands  on  the  stomach  of  his  bedfellow. 

In  due  time  the  blood  runs  to  the  hand  and  he  sets 
about  tidying  up  the  camp.  First,  the  hood  of  his  own 
bag.  It  is  loaded  with  icicles  and  frost,  the  result  of 
the  freezing  of  his  breath  while  asleep.  He  brushes  off 
the  ice  and  snow.  The  ice  has  settled  in  the  kettles  in 
the  meantime.  More  ice  must  be  chopped  and  put  into 
the  kettle.  The  chances  are  that  he  now  breaks  a 
commandment  and  steals  what  to  us  is  a  great  luxury— 
a  long  drink  of  water  to  ease  his  parched  throat.  Be- 
cause of  the  need  of  fuel  economy,  limit  is  placed  on 
drinks. 

Then  the  fire  needs  attention;  the  flame  is  imperfect 
and  the  gas  hole  needs  cleaning.  He  thoughtlessly 
grips  the  little  bit  of  metal  to  the  end  of  which  the  prim- 
ing needle  is  attached.  That  metal  is  so  cold  that  it 


LAND  DISCOVERED  235 

burns,  and  he  leaves  a  piece  of  his  skin  on  it.  Then 
the  breakfast  ration  of  pemmican  must  be  divided.  It 
is  not  frozen,  for  it  contains  no  water.  But  it  is  hard. 
The  stuff  looks  like  granite.  Heat  would  melt  it 
—but  there  is  no  fuel  to  spare.  The  two  slumberers 
are  given  a  thump,  and  their  eyes  open  to  the  stone-like 
pemmican.  Between  yawns  the  teeth  are  set  to  grind 
the  pemmican.  The  water  boils,  the  tea  is  tossed  in  it 
and  the  kettle  is  removed. 

We  rise  on  elbows,  still  in  the  bags,  to  enjoy  the 
one  heavenly  treat  of  our  lives,  the  cup  of  tea  which 
warms  the  hand  and  the  stomach  at  once. 

Then  we  dress.  It  is  remarkable  how  cold  compels 
speed  in  dressing. 

The  door  of  the  snowhouse  is  now  kicked  out — all 
tumble  about  to -warm  up  and  stop  chattering  teeth. 
Breaking  camp  is  a  matter  of  but  a  minute,  for  things 
fall  almost  automatically  into  convenient  packs.  The 
sledges  are  loaded  and  lashed  in  a  few  minutes.  Then 
the  teams  are  gathered  to  the  pulling  lines,  and  off  we 
go  with  a  run.  The  pace  for  dog  and  man  is  two  and  a 
half  miles  an  hour,  over  good  ice  or  bad  ice,  hard  snow 
or  soft  snow,  or  tumbling  over  neckbreaking  irregulari- 
ties. There  is  no  stop  for  lunch,  no  riding,  or  rest,  or 
anything  else.  It  is  drive — drive. 

At  times  it  was  impossible  to  perspire,  and  the  toxin 
of  fatigue,  generating  unearthly  weariness,  filled  the 
brain  with  fag.  When  perspiration  oozed  from  our 
pores,  as  we  forced  forward,  step  by  step,  it  froze  in  the 
garments  and  the  warmer  portions  of  our  bodies  were 
ringed  with  snow.  Daily,  unremittingly,  this  was  our 
agony. 


236  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

In  starting  before  the  end  of  the  winter  night,  and 
camping  on  the  open  ice  fields  in  the  long  northward 
march,  we  had  first  accustomed  our  eyes  to  frigid  dark- 
ness and  then  to  a  perpetual  glitter.  This  proved  to  be 
the  coldest  season  of  the  year,  and  we  ought  to  have 
been  hardened  to  all  kinds  of  Arctic  torment.  But  man 
gains  that  advantage  only  when  his  pulse  ceases  to  beat. 

Continuing  the  steady  stride  of  forward  marches, 
far  from  land,  far  from  life,  there  was  nothing  to  arouse 
a  warming  spirit.  Along  the  land  there  had  been  calms 
and  gales  and  an  inspiring  contrast,  even  in  the  dark 
days  and  nights,  but  here  the  frigid  world  was  felt  at  its 
worst.  The  wind,  which  came  persistently  from  the 
west — now  strong,  now  feeble,  but  always  sharp — in- 
flicted a  pain  to  which  we  never  became  accustomed. 

The  worst  torture  inflicted  by  the  wind  and  humid 
air  of  an  Arctic  pack  came  from  a  mask  of  ice  about  the 
face.  It  was  absurdly  picturesque  but  painful.  Every 
bit  of  exhaled  moisture  condensed  and  froze  either  to 
the  facial  hair  or  to  the  line  of  fox  tails  about  the  hood. 
It  made  comical  caricatures  of  us. 

Frequent  turns  in  our  course  exposed  both  sides  of 
the  face  to  the  wind  and  covered  with  icicles  every  hair 
offering  a  convenient  nucleus.  These  lines  of  crystal 
made  an  amazing  dash  of  light  and  color  as  we  looked  at 
each  other.  But  they  did  not  afford  much  amusement 
to  the  individual  exhibiting  them.  Such  hairs  as  had 
not  been  pulled  from  the  lips  and  chin  were  first 
weighted,  and  then  the  wind  carried  the  breath  to  the 
long  hair  with  which  we  protected  our  heads,  and  left  a 
mass  of  dangling  frost.  Accumulated  moisture  from 
the  eyes  coated  the  eyelashes  and  brows.  The  humidity 


art  ir 


BRADLFA'    LAM)    DISCOVERED 
SITRMFUCKI)    ISLAM)    OF    POL  AH    SEA 

<;<)ix<;   r.KYoxn  THE  BOFXDS  OF- LIFE 


SWIFT    PROGRESS    OVER    SMOOTH    ICE 

BUILDING    AN    IGLOO 
A    LIFELESS    WORLD    OF    COLD    AND    ICE 


LAND  DISCOVERED  237 

escaping  about  the  forehead  left  a  crescent  of  snow 
above,  while  that  escaping  under  the  chin,  combined  with 
falling  breath,  formed  there  a  semi-circle  of  ice.  The 
most  uncomfortable  icicles,  however,  were  those  that 
formed  on  the  coarse  hair  within  the  nostrils.  To  keep 
the  face  free,  the  Eskimos  pull  the  facial  hair  out  by  the 
roots,  the  result  of  which  is  a  rarity  of  mustaches  and 
beards.  Thus,  with  low  temperature  and  persistent 
winds,  life  was  one  of  constant  torture  on  the  march; 
but  cooped  in  snowhouses,  eating  dried  beef  and  tallow, 
and  drinking  hot  tea,  some  animal  comforts  were  occa- 
sionally to  be  gained  in  the  icy  camps. 

We  forced  the  dogs  onward  during  two  days  of 
cheery  bluster,  with  encouraging  results.  At  times  we 
ran  before  the  teams,  calling  and  urging  the  brutes  to 
leaping  progress.  On  the  evening  of  March  26,  with 
a  pedometer  and  other  methods  of  dead  reckoning  for 
position,  we  found  ourselves  at  latitude  84°  24',  longi- 
tude 96°  53'. 

The  western  horizon  remained  persistently  dark. 
A  storm  was  gathering,  and  slowly  moving  eastward. 
Late  in  the  evening  we  prepared  for  the  anticipated 
blast.  We  built  an  igloo  stronger  than  usual,  hoping 
that  the  horizon  would  be  cleared  with  a  brisk  wind  by 
the  morrow  and  afford  us  a  day  of  rest.  The  long,  steady 
marches,  without  time  for  recuperation,  necessarily 
dampened  our  enthusiam  for  a  brief  period  of  physical 
depression,  which,  however,  was  of  short  duration. 

Daily  we  had  learned  to  appreciate  more  and  more 
the  joy  of  the  sleeping  bag.  It  was  the  only  animal 
comfort  which  afforded  a  relief  to  our  life  of  frigid 
hardship,  and  often  with  the  thought  of  it  we  tried  to 


238  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

force  upon  the  weary  body  in  the  long  marches  a  pleas- 
ing anticipation. 

.  In  the  evening,  after  blocks  of  snow  walled  a  dome 
in  which  we  could  breathe  quiet  air,  the  blue-flame  lamp 
sang  notes  of  gastronomic  delights.  We  first  indulged  in 
a  heaven-given  drink  of  ice-water  to  quench  the  intense 
thirst  which  comes  after  hours  of  exertion  and  perspira- 
tion. Then  the  process  of  undressing  began,  one  at 
a  time,  for  there  was  not  room  enough  in  the  igloo  for 
all  to  undress  at  once. 

The  fur-stuffed  boots  were  pulled  off  and  the  bear- 
skin pants  were  stripped.  Then  half  of  the  body  was 
quickly  pushed  into  the  bag.  A  brick  of  pemmican  was 
next  taken  out  and  the  teeth  were  set  to  grind  on  this 
bone-like  substance.  Our  appetites  were  always  keen, 
but  a  half  pound  of  cold  withered  beef  and  tallow 
changes  a  hungry  man's  thoughts  effectually. 

The  tea,  an  hour  in  making,  was  always  welcome, 
and  we  rose  on  elbows  to  take  it.  Under  the  influence 
of  the  warm  drink,  the  fur  coat  with  its  mask  of  ice  was 
removed.  Next  the  shirt,  with  its  ring  of  ice  about  the 
waist,  would  come  off,  giving  the  last  sense  of  shivering. 
Pushing  the  body  farther  into  the  bag,  the  hood  was 
pulled  over  the  face,  and  we  were  lost  to  the  world 
of  ice. 

The  warm  sense  of  mental  and  physical  pleasure 
which  follows  is  an  interesting  study.  The  movement  of 
others,  the  sting  of  the  air,  the  noise  of  torturing  winds, 
the  blinding  rays  of  a  heatless  sun,  the  pains  of  driving 
snows  and  all  the  bitter  elements  are  absent.  One's 
mind,  freed  of  anxiety  and  suffering,  wanders  to  home 
and  better  times  under  these  peculiar  circumstances; 


LAND  DISCOVERED  239 

there  comes  a  pleasurable  sensation  in  the  touch  of  one's 
own  warm  skin,  while  the  companionship  of  the  arms 
and  legs,  freed  from  their  cumbersome  furs,  makes  a 
new  discovery  in  the  art  of  getting  next  to  one's  self. 

Early  on  March  27,  a  half  gale  was  blowing,  but  at 
noon  the  wind  ceased.  The  bright  sun  and  rising  tem- 
perature were  too  tempting  to  let  us  remain  quiescent. 
Although  the  west  was  still  dark  with  threatening 
clouds  we  hitched  the  dogs  to  the  sleds.  We  braced 
ourselves.  "Huk!  Huk !"  we  called,  and  bounded  away 
among  the  wind-swept  hummocks.  The  crevices  of  the 
ice  wound  like  writhing  snakes  as  we  raced  on.  We 
had  not  gone  many  miles  before  the  first  rush  of  the 
storm  struck  us.  Throwing  ourselves  over  the  sleds,  we 
waited  the  passing  of  the  icy  blast.  No  suitable  snow 
with  which  to  begin  the  erection  of  a  shelter  was  near. 
A  few  miles  northward,  as  we  saw,  was  a  promising  area 
for  a  camp.  This  we  hoped  to  reach  after  a  few 
moments'  rest.  The  squall  soon  spent  its  force.  In 
the  wind  which  followed  good  progress  was  made  with- 
out suffering  severely.  The  temperature  was  41°  below 
zero,  Fahrenheit,  and  the  barometer  29.05. 

Once  in  moving  order,  the  drivers  required  very 
little  encouragement  to  prolong  the  effort  to  a  fair  day's 
march  despite  the  weather.  As  the  sun  settled  in  the 
western  gloom  the  wind  increased  in  fury  and  forced 
us  to  camp.  Before  the  igloo  was  finished  a  steady, 
rasping,  wind  brushed  the  hummocks  and  piled  the  snow 
in  large  dunes  about  us,  like  the  sand  of  home  shores. 

The  snowhouse  was  not  cemented  as  usual  with 
water,  as  was  our  custom  when  weather  permitted.  The 
tone  of  the  wind  did  not  seem  to  indicate  danger,  and 


240  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

furthermore,  there  was  no  open  sea  water  near.  Be- 
cause of  the  need  of  fuel  economy  we  did  not  deem  it 
prudent  to  use  oil  for  fire  to  melt  snow,  excepting  for 
water  to  quench  thirst. 

Not  particularly  anxious  about  the  outcome  of  the 
storm,  and  with  senses  blunted  by  overwork  and  be- 
numbed with  cold,  we  sought  the  comfort  of  the  bags. 
Awakened  in  the  course  of  a  few  hours  by  drifts  of 
snow  about  our  feet,  I  noted  that  the  wind  had  burrowed 
holes  at  weak  spots  through  the  snow  wall.  We  were 
bound,  however,  not  to  be  cheated  of  a  few  hours'  sleep, 
and  with  one  eye  open  we  turned  over.  I  was  awakened 
by  falling  snow  blocks  soon  after. 

Forcing  my  head  out  of  my  ice-encased  fur  hood, 
I  saw  the  sky,  cloud-swept  and  grey.  The  dome  of  the 
igloo  had  been  swept  away.  We  were  being  quickly 
buried  under  a  dangerous  weight  of  snow.  In  some  way 
I  had  tossed  about  sufficiently  during  sleep  to  keep  on 
top  of  the  accumulating  drift,  but  my  companions  were 
nowhere  to  be  seen.  About  me  for  miles  the  white 
spaces  were  vacant.  With  dread  in  my  heart  I  uttered  a 
loud  call,  but  there  came  no  response. 

A  short  frenzied  search  revealed  a  blowhole  in  the 
snow.  In  response  to  another  call,  as  from  some  sub- 
terranean place  came  muffled  Eskimo  shouts.  Tearing 
and  burrowing  at  the  fallen  snow  blocks  I  made  violent 
efforts  to  free  them,  buried  as  they  were  in  their  bags. 
But  to  my  dismay  the  soft  snow  settled  on  them  tighter 
with  each  tussle. 

I  was  surprised,  a  few  moments  later,  as  I  was 
working  to  keep  their  breathing  place  open,  to  feel  them 
burrowing  through  the  snow.  They  had  entered  their 


LAND  DISCOVERED  241 

bags  without  undressing.  Half  clothed  in  shirt  and 
pants,  but  with  bare  feet,  they  writhed  and  wriggled 
through  the  bags  and  up  through  the  breathing  hole. 

After  a  little  digging  their  boots  were  uncovered, 
and  then,  with  protected  feet,  the  bag  was  freed  and 
placed  at  the  side  of  the  igloo. 

Into  it  the  boys  crept,  fully  dressed,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  coats.  I  rolled  out  beside  them  in  my  bag.  We 
lay  in  the  open  sweep  of  furious  wind,  impotent  to 
move,  for  twenty-nine  hours.  Only  then  the  frigid  blast 
eased  enough  to  enable  us  to  creep  out  into  the  open. 
The  air  came  in  hissing  spouts,  like  jets  of  steam  from 
an  engine. 

Soon  after  noon  of  March  29  the  air  brightened. 
It  became  possible  to  breathe  without  being  choked 
with  floating  crystals,  and  as  the  ice  about  our  facial 
furs  was  broken,  a  little  blue  patch  was  detected  in  the 
west.  We  now  freed  the  dogs  of  their  snow  entangle- 
ment and  fed  them.  A  shelter  was  made  in  which,  to 
melt  snow  and  brew  tea.  We  ate  a  double  ration. 

Hitching  the  dogs  we  raced  off.  The  monotonous 
fields  of  snow  swept  under  us.  Soon  the  sun  burst 
through  separating  clouds  and  upraised  icy  spires  be- 
fore us.  The  wind  died  away.  A  crystal  glory  trans- 
figured the  storm-swept  fields.  We  seemed  traveling 
over  fields  of  diamonds,  scintillant  as  white  fire,  which 
shimmered  dazzlingly  about  us.  It  is  curious  to  observe 
an  intense  fiery  glitter  and  glow,  as  in  the  North,  which 
gives  absolutely  no  impression  of  warmth.  Fire  here 
seems  cold.  With  full  stomachs,  fair  weather  and  a  much 
needed  rest,  we  moved  with  renewed  inspiration.  The 
dogs  ran  with  tails  erect,  ears  pricked.  I  and  my  com- 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

panions  ran  behind  with  the  joy  of  contestants  in  a  race. 
Indeed,  we  felt  refreshed  as  one  does  after  a  cold  bath. 

Considerable  time  and  distance,  however,  were  lost 
in  seeking  a  workable  line  of  travel  about  obstructions 
and  making  detours.  Camping  at  midnight,  we  had 
made  only  nine  miles  by  a  day's  effort.  The  conditions 
under  which  this  second  hundred  miles  were  forced, 
proved  to  be  in  every  respect  the  most  exciting  of  the 
run  of  five  hundred  miles  over  the  Polar  sea.  The  mere 
human  satisfaction  of  overcoming  difficulties  was  a  daily 
incentive  to  surmount  obstacles  and  meet  baffling 
problems.  The  weather  was  unsettled.  Sudden  storms 
broke  with  spasmodic  force,  the  barometer  was  unsteady 
and  the  temperature  ranged  from  20°  below  zero  to  60° 
below  zero.  The  ice  showed  signs  of  recent  agitation. 

New  leads  and  recent  sheets  of  new  ice  combined 
with  deep  snow  made  travel  difficult.  Persistently  on- 
ward, pausing  at  times,  we  would  urge  the  dogs  to  the 
limit.  One  dog  after  another  went  into  the  stomachs 
of  the  hungry  survivors.  Camps  were  now  swept  by 
storms.  The  ice  opened  out  under  our  bodies,  shelter 
was  often  a  mere  hole  in  the  snow  bank.  Each  of  us 
carried  painful  wounds,  frost  bites ;  and  the  ever  chronic 
emptiness  of  half  filled  stomachs  brought  a  gastric  call 
for  food,  impossible  to  supply.  Hard  work  and  strong 
winds  sent  unquenched  thirst  tortures  to  burning  throats, 
and  the  gloom  of  ever  clouded  skies  sent  despair  to  its 
lowest  reaches. 

But  there  was  no  monotony;  our  tortures  came 
from  different  angles,  and  frem  so  many  sources,  that 
we  were  ever  aroused  to  a  fighting  spirit.  With  a  push 
at  the  sled  or  a  pull  at  the  line  we  helped  the  wind-teased 


LAND  DISCOVERED  243 

dogs  to  face  the  nose  cutting  drift  that  swept  the  pack 
mile  after  mile.  Day  after  day  we  plunged  farther  and 
farther  along  into  the  icy  despair  and  stormy  bluster. 

Throughout  the  entire  advance  northward  I  found 
there  was  some  advantage  in  my  Eskimo  companions 
having  some  slight  comprehension  of  the  meaning  of 
my  aim.  Doubtless  through  information  and  ideas  that 
had  sifted  from  explorers  to  Eskimos  for  many  genera- 
tions past,  the  aborigines  had  come  to  understand  that 
there  is  a  point  at  the  top  of  the  globe,  which  is  some- 
how the  very  top  of  the  world,  and  that  at  this  summit 
there  is  something  which  white  men  have  long  been 
anxious  to  find — a  something  which  the  Eskimo  describe 
as  the  "big  nail."  The  feeling  that  they  were  setting 
out  with  me  in  the  hope  of  being  the  first  to  find  this 
"big  nail" — for,  of  course,  I  had  told  them  of  the  possi- 
bility— helped  to  keep  up  the  interest  and  courage  of 
my  two  companions  during  long  days  of  hardship. 

Naturally  enough,  I  could  not  expect  their  interest 
in  the  Pole  itself  to  be  great.  Their  promised  reward 
for  accompanying  me,  a  gun  and  knife  for  each,  main- 
tained a  lively  interest  in  them.  After  a  ceaseless  war- 
fare lasting  seven  days,  on  March  30  the  eastern  sky 
broke  in  lines  of  cheering  blue.  Whipped  by  low  winds 
the  clouds  broke  and  scurried. 

Soon  the  western  heavens,  ever  a  blank  mystery, 
cleared.  Under  it,  to  my  surprise,  lay  a  new  land.  I 
think  I  felt  a  thrill  such  as  Columbus  must  have  felt 
when  the  first  green  vision  of  America  loomed  before 
his  eye. 

My  promise  to  the  good,  trusty  boys  of  nearness  to 
land  was  unwittingly  on  my  part  made  good,  and  the 


244  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

delight  of  eyes  opened  to  the  earth's  northernmost  rocks 
dispelled  all  the  physical  torture  of  the  long  run  of 
storms.  As  well  as  I  could  see,  the  land  seemed  an  in- 
terrupted coast  extending  parallel  to  the  line  of  march 
for  about  fifty  miles,  far  to  the  west.  It  was  snow 
covered,  ice-sheeted  and  desolate.  But  it  was  real  land 
with  all  the  sense  of  security  solid  earth  can  offer.  To 
us  that  meant  much,  for  we  had  been  adrift  in  a  moving 
sea  of  ice,  at  the  mercy  of  tormenting  winds.  Now  came, 
of  course,  the  immediate  impelling  desire  to  set  foot 
upon  it,  but  to  do  so  I  knew  would  have  side-tracked 
us  from  our  direct  journey  to  the  Polar  goal.  In  any 
case,  delay  was  jeopardous,  and,  moreover,  our  food 
supply  did  not  permit  our  taking  time  to  inspect  the 
new  land.* 

*  After  my  return  to  Copenhagen  I  was  widely  quoted  as  declaring  that 
I  had  discovered  and  traversed  30,000  square  miles  of  new  land.  What  I 
did  report  was  that  in  my  journey  I  had  passed  through  an  area  wherein 
it  was  possible  to  declare  30,000  square  miles — a  terrestrial  unknown  of 
water  and  ice — cleared  from  the  blank  of  our  charts.  I  have  been  quoted 
as  describing  this  land  as  "a  paradise  for  hunters"  and  criticised  on  the 
ground  that  animal  life  does  not  exist  so  far  north.  Whether  animal  life 
existed  there,  I  do  not  know,  for  the  impetus  of  my  quest  left  no  time  to 
investigate.  I  passed  the  last  game  at  Heiberg  Land. 

In  my  diary  of  the  day's  doings,  only  the  results  of  observations  were 
written  down.  The  detail  calculations  were  made  on  loose  sheets  of  paper 
and  in  other  note  books — wherein  was  recorded  all  instrumental  data.  Later 
all  my  observations  were  reduced  in  the  form  in  which  they  were  to  be 
finally  presented.  Therefore,  these  field  papers  with  their  miscellaneous 
notes  had  served  their  purpose,  as  had  the  instruments;  and  for  this  reason 
most  of  the  material  was  left  with  Harry  Whitney.  A  few  of  the  im- 
portant calculations  were  kept  more  as  a  curiosity.  These  will  be  pre- 
sented as  we  go  along.  Those  left  I  thought  might  later  be  useful  for  a 
re-examination  of  the  results;  but  it  never  occurred  to  me  that  Whitney 
would  be  forced  to  bury  the  material,  as  he  was  by  Peary.  I  do  not  regard 
those  buried  notes  as  being  proof  or  as  being  particularly  valuable,  except 
as  proving  Peary  to  be  one  of  the  most  ungracious  and  selfish  characters 
in  history. 

In  the  subsequent  excitement,  because  Peary  cried  fraud  on  the  very 
papers  which  he  had  buried  for  me,  an  agitated  group  of  American  arm- 
chair explorers  came  to  the  conclusion  against  the  dictates  of  history  that 
the  proof  of  the  Polar  quest  was  to  be  found  in  the  re-examination  of  the 
figures  of  the  observations  for  position. 


LAND  DISCOVERED  245 

This  new  land  was  never  clearly  seen.  A  low  mist, 
seemingly  from  open  water,  hid  the  shore  line.  We  saw 
the  upper  slopes  only  occasionally  from  our  point  of 
observation.  There  were  two  distinct  land  masses.  The 
most  southern  cape  of  the  southern  mass  bore  west  by 
south,  but  still  further  to  the  south  there  were  vague 
indications  of  land.  The  most  northern  cape  of  the 
same  mass  bore  west  by  north.  Above  it  there  was  a 

Part  of  mine  were  buried.  Peary  had  his.  Thus  handicapped,  because 
blocks  of  my  field  calculations  were  absent,  with  the  instruments  and 
chronometer  corrections,  I  rested  my  case  at  Copenhagen  on  a  report,  the 
original  notes  giving  the  brief  tabulations  of  the  day's  doings,  and  the 
complete  set  of  reduced  observations. 

My  friends  have  criticised  me  for  not  sending  the  data  given  below 
and  similar  observations  to  Copenhagen  to  prove  my  claim,  but  I  did  not 
deem  it  worth  while  to  present  more,  taking  the  ground  that  if  in  this 
there  was  not  sufficient  material  to  explain  the  movement  step  by  step  of 
the  Polar  quest,  then  no  academic  examination  could  be  of  any  value.  This 
viewpoint,  as  I  see  it  at  present,  was  a  mistake.  I  am  now  presenting 
every  scrap  of  paper  and  every  isolated  fact,  not  as  proof  but  as  part  of 
the  record  of  the  expedition,  with  due  after-thought,  and  the  better  per- 
spective afforded  by  time.  Every  explorer  does  this.  Upon  such  a  record 
history  has  always  given  its  verdict  of  the  value  of  an  explorer's  work. 
It  will  do  the  same  in  estimating  the  relative  merits  of  the  Polar  quest. 

Observation  as  figured  out  in  original  field  paper  for  March  30,  1908: 

Longitude  95.36.    Bar.  30.10  had  risen  from  29.50  in  2  hours.  Temp.  — 34°. 
"Wind  2.    Mag.  N.  E.    Clouds  Mist  W.-Water  bands  E. 

95y2  Noon,lT       18—46—10 

4  IT       18—48—20 

60  |  382  $ 


6—22  18—47—15 

I.  E.  -f2 

2  Jl8^49=15~ 


—16—  2 
9_  8— 36~ 
R.&P.  —9 


8—59—36 
90 

81—00—24 


3—49—32  3—49—32 


84—49—56 

Shadows  39  ft.  (of  tent  pole  6  ft.  above  snow). 
(Directions  Magnetic.) 


246  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

distinct  break  for  15  or  20  miles,  and  beyond  the  north- 
ern mass  extended  above  the  eighty-fifth  parallel  to  the 
northwest.  The  entire  coast  was  at  this  time  placed  on 
our  charts  as  having  a  shore  line  along  the  one  hundred 
and  second  meridian,  approximately  parallel  to  our  line 
of  travel.  At  the  time  the  indications  suggested  two 
distinct  islands.  Nevertheless,  we  saw  so  little  of 
the  land  that  we  could  not  determine  whether  it  con- 
sisted of  islands  or  of  a  larger  mainland.  The  lower 
coast  resembled  Heiberg  Island,  with  mountains  and 
high  valleys.  The  upper  coast  I  estimated  as  being 
about  one  thousand  feet  high,  flat,  and  covered  with  a 
thin  sheet  ice.  Over  the  land  I  write  "Bradley  Land'* 
in  honor  of  John  R.  Bradley,  whose  generous  help  had 
made  possible  the  important  first  stage  of  the  expedi- 
tion. The  discovery  of  this  land  gave  an  electric  im- 
petus of  driving  vigor  at  just  the  right  moment  to 
counterbalance  the  effect  of  the  preceding  week  of 
storm  and  trouble. 

Although  I  gazed  longingly  and  curiously  at  the 
land,  to  me  the  Pole  was  the  pivot  of  ambition.  My 
boys  had  not  the  same  northward  craze,  but  I  told  them 
to  reach  the  land  on  our  return  might  be  possible.  We 

Because  of  the  impossibility  of  making  correct  allowances  for  refrac- 
tion, I  have  made  a  rough  allowance  of  — 9'  for  refraction  and  parallax 
in  all  my  observations. 

The  tent  pole  was  a  hickory  floor  slat  of  one  of  the  sledges.  It  was 
6  ft.  6  ins.  high,  2  ins.  wide,  and  ya  in.  thick.  This  stick  was  marked  in 
feet  and  inches,  to  be  used  as  a  measuring  stick.  It  also  served  as  a 
paddle  and  steering  oar  for  the  boat. 

By  pressing  this  tent  pole  6  ins.  into  the  snow,  it  served  as  a  6  ft. 
pole  to  measure  the  shadows.  These  measurements  were  recorded  on  the 
observation  blanks.  Absolute  accuracy  for  the  measurements  is  not 
claimed,  because  of  the  difficulty  of  determining  the  line  of  demarcation 
in  long,  indistinct  shadows;  but' future  efforts  will  show  that  my  shadow 
measurements  are  an  important  check  on  all  sun  observations  by  which 
latitude  and  longitude  are  determined. 


LAND  DISCOVERED 


247 


never  saw  it  again.  This  new  land  made  a  convenient 
mile-post,  for  from  this  time  on  the  days  were  counted  tc 
and  from  it.  A  good  noon  sight  fixed  the  point  of  obser- 
vation to  84°  50',  longitude  95°  36".  We  had  forced 
beyond  the  second  hundred  miles  from  Svartevoeg.  Be- 
fore us  remained  about  three  hundred  more  miles,  to 
my  alluring,  mysterious  goal. 


ARCTIC  FOX 


BEYOND  THE  RANGE  OF  LIFE 

"WITH  A  NEW  SPRING  TO  WEARY  LEGS  BRADLEY  LAV^I*  iS 
LEFT  BEHIND — FEELING  THE  ACHING  VASTNESS  OF 
THE  WORLD  BEFORE  MAN  WAS  MADE — CURIOUS 
GRIMACES  OF  THE  MIDNIGHT  SUN — SUFFERINGS  IN- 
CREASE— BY  PERSISTENT  AND  LABORIOUS  PROGRESS 
ANOTHER  HUNDRED  MILES  IS  COVERED 

XVII 

Two  HUNDRED  MILES  FROM  THE  POLE 

A  curtain  of  mist  was  drawn  over  the  new  land  in 
the  afternoon  of  March  31,  and,  although  we  gazed 
westward  longingly,  we  saw  no  more  of  it.  Day  after 
day  we  now  pushed  onward  in  desperate  northward 
efforts.  Strong  winds  and  fractured,  irregular  ice,  in- 
creased our  difficulties.  Although  progress  was  slow 
for  several  days  we  managed  to  gain  a  fair  march  be- 
tween storms  during  each  twenty-four  hours.  During 
occasional  spells  of  icy  stillness  mirages  spread  screens 
of  fantasy  out  for  our  entertainment.  Curious  cliffs, 
odd-shaped  mountains  and  inverted  ice  walls  were  dis- 
played in  attractive  colors. 

Discoveries  of  new  land  seemed  often  made.  But 
with  a  clearing  horizon  the  deception  was  detected. 

The  boys  believed  most  of  these  signs  to  be  indica- 
tions of  real  land — a  belief  I  persistently  encouraged, 


BEYOND  THE  RANGE  OF  LIFE  249 

because  it  relieved  them  of  the  panic  of  the  terror  of  the 
unknown. 

On  April  3,  the  barometer  remained  steady  and 
the  thermometer  sank.  The  weather  became  settled  and 
fairly  clear,  the  horizon  was  freed  of  its  smoky  vapors, 
the  pack  assumed  a  more  permanent  aspect  of  glittering 
color.  At  noon  there  was  now  a  dazzling  light,  while 
at  night  the  sun  kissed  the  frozen  seas  behind  screens 
of  mouse-colored  cloud  and  haze.  At  the  same  moment 
the  upper  skies  flushed  with  the  glow  of  color  of  the 
coming  double-days  of  joy. 

As  we  advanced  north  of  Bradley  Land  the  pack 
disturbance  of  land-divided  and  land- jammed  ice  dis- 
appeared. The  fields  became  larger  and  less  trouble- 
some, the  weather  improved,  the  temperature  ranged 
from  20°  to  50°  below  zero,  the  barometer  rose  and 
remained  steady,  the  day  sky  cleared  with  increasing 
color,  but  a  low  haze  blotted  out  much  of  the  night  glory 
which  attended  the  dip  of  the  nocturnal  sun.  With 
dogs  barking  and  rushing  before  speeding  sleds,  we 
made  swift  progress.  But  the  steady  drag  and  mo- 
notony of  the  never  changing  work  and  scene  reduced 
interest  in  life. 

The  blankness  of  the  mental  desert  which  moved 
about  us  as  we  ran  along  was  appalling.  Nothing 
changed  materially.  The  horizon  moved.  Our  footing 
was  seemingly  a  solid  stable  ice  crust,  which  was,  how- 
ever, constantly  shifting  eastward.  All  the  world  on 
which  we  traveled  was  in  motion.  We  moved,  but  we 
took  our  landscape  with  us. 

At  the  end  of  the  day's  march  we  were  often  too 
tired  to  build  snow  houses,  and  in  sheer  exhaustion  we 


250  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

bivouacked  in  the  lee  of  hummocks.  Here  the  over- 
worked body  called  for  sleep,  but  my  mind  refused  to 
close  the  eyes.  My  boys  had  the  advantage  of  sleep. 
I  envied  them.  Anyone  who  has  suffered  from  in- 
somnia may  be  able  in  a  small  degree  to  gauge  my 
condition  when  sleep  became  impossible.  To  reach  the 
end  of  my  journey  became  the  haunting,  ever-present 
goading  thought  of  my  wakeful  existence. 

As  I  lay  painfully  trying  to  coax  slumber,  my  mind 
worked  like  the  wheels  of  a  machine.  Dizzily,  the  jour- 
ney behind  repeated  itself;  I  again  crossed  the  Big 
Lead,  again  floundered  in  an  ice-cold  open  sea.  Dangers 
of  all  sorts  took  form  to  harass  me.  Instead  of  sleep,  a 
delirium  of  anxiety  and  longing  possessed  me. 

Beyond  the  eighty- fourth  parallel  we  had  passed 
the  bounds  of  visible  life.  Lying  wakeful  in  that  barren 
world,  with  my  companions  asleep,  I  felt  what  few  men 
of  cities,  perhaps,  ever  feel — the  tragic  isolation  of  the 
human  soul — a  thing  which,  dwelt  upon,  must  mean 
madness.  I  think  I  realized  the  aching  vastness  of  the 
world  after  creation,  before  man  was  made. 

For  many  days  we  had  not  seen  a  suggestion  of 
animated  nature.  There  were  no  longer  animal  trails 
to  indicate  life;  no  breath  spouts  of  seal  escaped  from 
the  frosted  bosom  of  the  sea.  Not  even  the  microscopic 
life  of  the  deep  was  longer  detected  under  us.  We  were 
alone — alone  in  a  lifeless  world.  We  had  come  to  this 
blank  space  of  the  earth  by  slow  but  progressive  stages. 
Sailing  from  the  bleak  land  of  the  fisher  folk  along 
the  out-posts  of  civilization,  the  complex  luxury  of  met- 
ropolitan life  was  lost.  Beyond,  in  the  half  savage  wil- 
derness of  Danish  Greenland,  we  partook  of  a  new  life 


BEYOND  THE  RANGE  OF  LIFE  251 

of  primitive  simplicity.  Still  farther  along,  in  the 
Ultima  Thule  of  the  aborigines,  we  reverted  to  a  pre- 
historic plane  of  living.  Advancing  beyond  the  haunts 
of  men,  we  reached  the  noonday  deadliness  of  a  world 
without  life. 

As  we  pushed  beyond  into  the  sterile  wastes,  with 
eager  eyes  we  constantly  searched  the  dusky  plains  of 
frost,  but  there  was  no  speck  of  life  to  grace  the  purple 
run  of  death.* 

During  these  desolate  marches,  my  legs  working 
mechanically,  my  mind  with  anguish  sought  some  object 
upon  which  to  fasten  itself.  My  eyes  scrutinized  the 
horizon.  I  saw,  every  day,  every  sleeping  hour,  hills 
of  ice,  vast  plains  of  ice,  now  a  deadly  white,  now  a  dull 
gray,  now  a  misty  purple,  sometimes  shot  with  gold  or 
gleaming  with  lakes  of  ultramarine,  moving  towards  and 
by  me,  an  ever-changing  yet  ever-monotonous  pano- 
rama which  wearied  me  as  does  the  shifting  of  unchang- 
ing scenery  seen  from  a  train  window.  As  I  paced  the 
weary  marches,  I  fortunately  became  unconscious  of 
the  painful  movement  of  my  legs.  Although  I  walked 
I  had  a  sensation  of  being  lifted  involuntarily  onward. 

The  sense  of  covering  distance  gave  me  a  dull, 
pleasurable  satisfaction.  Only  some  catastrophe,  some 
sudden  and  overwhelming  obstacle  would  have  aroused 
me  to  an  intense  mental  emotion,  to  a  passionate  despair, 
to  the  anguish  of  possible  defeat. 

I  was  now  becoming  the  unconscious  instrument  of 


*  Peary  claims  to  have  seen  life  east  of  this  position.  This  is  perfectly 
possible,  for  Arctic  explorers  have  often  noted  when  game  trails  were 
abundant  one  year,  none  were  seen  the  next.  In  these  tracks  of  foxes  and 
bears,  as  noted  by  Baldwin,  are  positive  proofs  of  the  position  of  Bradley 
Land — for  such  animals  work  onlv  from  a  land  base. 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

my  ambition ;  almost  without  volition  my  body  was  being 
carried  forward  by  a  subconscious  force  which  had 
fastened  itself  upon  a  distant  goal.  Sometimes  the 
wagging  of  a  dog's  tail  held  my  attention  for  long 
minutes;  it  afforded  a  curious  play  for  my  morbidly 
obsessed  imagination.  In  an  hour  I  would  forget  what 
I  had  been  thinking.  To-day  I  cannot  remember  the 
vague,  fanciful  illusions  about  curiously  insignificant 
things  which  occupied  my  faculties  in  this  dead  world. 
The  sun,  however,  did  relieve  the  monotony,  and  cre- 
ated in  the  death-chilled  world  skies  filled  with  elysian 
flowers  and  mirages  of  beauty  undreamed  of  by  Aladdin. 

My  senses  at  the  time,  as  I  have  said,  were  vaguely 
benumbed.  While  we  traveled  I  heard  the  sound  of 
the  moving  sledges.  Their  sharp  steel  runners  cut  the 
ice  and  divided  the  snow  like  a  cleaving  knife.  I  be- 
came used  to  the  first  shudder  of  the  rasping  sound.  In 
the  dead  lulls  between  wind  storms  I  would  listen  with 
curious  attention  to  the  soft  patter  of  our  dogs'  feet. 
At  times  I  could  hear  their  tiny  toe  nails  grasping  at 
forward  ice  ridges  in  order  to  draw  themselves  forward, 
and,  strangely — so  were  all  my  thoughts  interwoven 
with  my  ambition — this  clenching,  crunching,  gritty 
sound  gave  me  a  delighted  sense  of  progress,  a  sense  of 
ever  covering  distance  and  nearing,  ever  nearing  the 
Pole.  . 

In  this  mid-Polar  basin  the  ice  does  not  readily 
separate.  It  is  probably  in  motion  at  all  times  of  the 
year.  In  this  readjustment  of  fields  following  motion 
and  expansion,  open  spaces  of  water  appear.  These, 
during  most  months,  are  quickly  sheeted  with  new  ice. 

In  these  troubled  areas  I  had  frequent  opportuni- 


BEYOND  THE  RANGE  OF  LIFE  253 

ties  to  measure  ice-thickness.  From  my  observation  I 
had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  ice  does  not  freeze  to 
a  depth  of  more  than  twelve  or  fifteen  feet  during  a 
single  year.  Occasionally  we  crossed  fields  fifty  feet 
thick.  These  invariably  showed  signs  of  many  years  of 
surface  upbuilding. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  estimate  the  amount  of  sub- 
merged freezing  after  the  first  year's  ice,  but  the  very 
uniform  thickness  of  Antarctic  sea  ice  suggests  that  a 
limit  is  reached  the  second  year,  when  the  ice,  with  its 
cover  of  snow,  is  so  thick  that  very  little  is  added  after- 
ward from  below. 

Increase  in  size  after  that  is  probably  the  result 
mostly  of  addition  to  the  superstructure.  Frequent 
falls  of  snow,  combined  with  alternate  melting  and 
freezing  in  summer,  and  a  process  similar  to  the  up- 
building of  glacial  ice,  are  mainly  responsible  for  the 
growth  in  thickness  of  the  ice  on  the  Polar  sea. 

The  very  heavy,  undulating  fields,  which  give 
character  to  the  mid-Polar  ice  and  escape  along  the  east 
and  west  coasts  of  Greenland,  are,  therefore,  mostly 
augmented  from  the  surface. 

Continuing  north,  at  no  time  was  the  horizon  per- 
fectly clear.  But  the  weather  was  good  enough  to  per- 
mit frequent  nautical  observations.  Our  course  was 
lined  on  uninteresting  blank  sheets.  There  were  elusive 
signs  of  land  frequent  enough  to  maintain  an  explor- 
ing enthusiasm,  which  helped  me  also  in  satisfying  my 
companions.  For  thus  they  were  encouraged  to  believe 
in  a  nearness  to  terrestrial  solidity.  At  every  breathing 
spell,  when  we  got  together  for  a  little  chat,  Ah-we- 
lah's  hand,  with  pointed  finger,  was  directed  to  some 


254  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

spot  on  the  horizon  or  some  low-lying  cloud,  with  the 
shout  of  "Noona?"  (land),  to  which  I  always  replied  in 
the  affirmative;  but,  for  me,  the  field-glasses  and  later 
positions  dispelled  the  illusion. 

Man,  under  pressure  of  circumstances,  will  adapt 
himself  to  most  conditions  of  life.  To  ,me  the  other- 
world  environment  of  the  Polar-pack,  far  from  con- 
tinental fastness,  was  beginning  to  seem  quite  natural. 

We  forced  marches  day  after  day.  We  traveled 
until  dogs  languished  or  legs  failed.  Ice  hills  rose  and 
fell  before  us.  Mirages  grimaced  at  our  dashing  teams 
with  wondering  faces.  Daily  the  incidents  and  our  posi- 
tion were  recorded,  but  our  adventures  were  promptly 
forgotten  in  the  mental  bleach  of  the  next  day's  effort. 

Night  was  now  as  bright  as  day.  By  habit,  we 
emerged  from  our  igloos  later  and  later.  On  the  5th 
and  6th  we  waited  until  noon  before  starting,  to  get 
observations ;  but,  as  was  so  often  the  case,  when  the  sun 
was  watched,  it  slipped  under  clouds.  This  late  start 
brought  our  stopping  time  close  to  midnight,  and  in- 
fused an  interest  in%the  midnight  sun;  but  the  persistent 
haze  which  clouded  the  horizon  at  night  when  the  sun 
was  low  denied  us  a  glimpse  of  the  midnight  luminary. 

The  night  of  April  7  was  made  notable  by  the 
swing  of  the  sun  at  midnight,  above  the  usual  obscuring 
mist,  behind  which  it  had,  during  previous  days,  sunk 
with  its  night  dip  of  splendor.  For  a  number  of  nights 
it  made  grim  faces  at  us  in  its  setting.  A  tantalizing 
mist,  drawn  as  a  curtain  over  the  northern  sea  at  mid- 
night, had  afforded  curious  advantages  for  celestial 
staging.  We  were  unable  to  determine  sharply  the 
advent  of  the  midnight  sun,  but  the  colored  cloud  and 


BEYOND  THE  RANGE  OF  LIFE  255 

haze  into  which  it  nightly  sank  produced  a  spectacular 
play  which  interested  us  immensely. 

Sometimes  the  great  luminary  was  drawn  out  into 
an  egg-shaped  elongation  with  horizontal  lines  of  color 
drawn  through  it.  I  pictured  it  as  some  splendid  fire- 
colored  lantern  flung  from  the  window  of  Heaven. 
Again,  it  was  pressed  into  a  basin  flaming  with  magical 
fires,  burning  behind  a  mystic  curtain  of  opalescent 
frosts.  Blue  at  other  time's,  it  appeared  like  a  huge 
vase  of  luminous  crystal,  such  as  might  be  evoked  by  the 
weird  genii  of  the  Orient,  from  which  it  required  very 
little  imagination  to  see  purple,  violet,  crimson  and 
multi-colored  flowers  springing  beauteously  into  the  sky. 

These  changes  took  place  quickly,  as  by  magic. 
Usually  the  last  display  was  of  distorted  faces,  some 
animal,  some  semi-human — huge,  grotesque,  and  curi- 
ously twitching  countenances  of  clouds  and  fire.  At 
times  they  appallingly  resembled  the  hideous  teeth- 
gnashing  deities  of  China,  that,  with  gnarled  arms  up- 
raised, holding  daggers  of  flame  and  surrounded  by 
smoke,  were  rising  toward  us  from  beyond  the  horizon. 

Sometimes  in  our  northward  progress  these  faces 
laughed,  again  they  scowled  ominously.  What  the 
actual  configurations  were  I  do  not  know;  I  suppose 
two  men  see  nothing  exactly  alike  in  this  topsy-turvy 
world. 

Rushing  northward  with  forced  haste,  unreal 
beauties  took  form  as  if  to  lure  us  to  pause.  Clouds  of 
steam  rising  from  frozen  seas  like  geysers  assumed  the 
aspects  of  huge  fountains  of  iridescent  fire.  As  the 
sun  rose,  lines  of  light  like  quicksilver  quivered  and 
writhed  about  the  horizon,  and  in  swirling,  swimming 


256  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

circles  closed  and  narrowed  about  us  on  the  increasingly 
color-burned  but  death-chilled  areas  of  ice  over  which 
we  worked.  Setting  amid  a  dance  of  purple  radiance, 
the  sun,  however,  instead  of  inspiring  us,  filled  us  with 
a  sick  feeling  of  giddiness.  What  beauty  there  was  in 
these  spectacles  was  often  lost  upon  our  benumbed 
senses. 

Nowhere  in  the  world,  perhaps,  are  seen  such 
spectacles  of  celestial  glory.  The  play  of  light  on  clouds 
and  ice  produces  the  illusion  of  some  supernatural  realm. 

We  had  now  followed  the  sun's  northward  ad- 
vance— from  its  first  peep,  at  midday,  above  the  south- 
ern ice  of  the  Polar  gateway,  to  its  sweep  over  the  north- 
ern ice  at  midnight.  From  the  end  of  the  Polar  night, 
late  in  February,  to  the  first  of  the  double  days  and  the 
midnight  suns,  we  had  forced  a  trail  through  darkness 
and  blood-hardening  temperature,  and  over  leg-break- 
ing irregularities  of  an  unknown  world  of  ice,  to  a  spot 
almost  exactly  two  hundred  miles  from  the  Pole!  To 
this  point  our  destiny  had  been  auspiciously  protected. 
Ultimate  success  seemed  within  grasp.  But  we  were 
not  blind  to  the  long  line  of  desperate  effort  still  re- 
quired to  push  over  the  last  distance. 

Now  that  we  had  the  sun  unmistakably  at  mid- 
night, its  new  glory  before  us  was  an  incentive  to  onward 
efforts.  Previous  to  this  the  sun  had  been  undoubtedly 
above  the  horizon,  but,  as  is  well  known,  when  the  sun  is 
low  and  the  atmospheric  humidity  is  high,  as  it  always 
is  over  the  pack,  a  dense  cloud  of  frost  crystals  rests  on 
the  ice  and  obscures  the  horizon.  During  the  previous 
days  the  sun  sank  into  this  frosty  haze  and  was  lost  for 
several  hours. 


BEYOND  THE  RANGE  OF  LIFE  357 

Observations  on  April  8*  placed  camp  at  latitude 
86°  36',  longitude  94°  2'.  Although  we  had  made  long 
marches  and  really  great  speed,  we  had  advanced  only 
ninety-six  miles  in  the  nine  days.  Much  of  our  hard 
work  had  been  lost  in  circuitous  twists  around  trouble- 
some pressure  lines  and  high,  irregular  fields  of  very 
old  ice.  The  drift  ice  was  throwing  us  to  the  east  with 
sufficient  force  to  give  us  some  anxiety,  but  with  eyes 
closed  to  danger  and  hardships,  double  days  of  fatigue 
and  double  days  of  glitter  quickly  followed  one  another. 

Observation  on  April  8,  from  original  field-papers.  April  8,  1908,. 
Longitude  94°-2'.  Bar.  29.80,  rising.  Temp.  —31°.  Wind  2,  Mag.  N.  E. 
Clouds  St.  3. 


0 21°— 59'— 30" 

0 21  —08—20 


2  |  43  —  7  —50 
21  —33—55 
I.  E.  4-2 


2  |  21  —35—50 
10  —47^55" 
—9 

10  —38—55 
90— 


79 
7  _ 


7—15—23  86  —36—28 

Shadows  32  ft.  (of  pole  6 
ft.  above  snow). 


Everything  was  now  in  our  favor,  but  here  we  felt 
most  of  the  accumulating  effect  of  long  torture, -in  a 


258  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

world  where  every  element  of  Nature  is  hostile.  Human 
endurance  has  distinct  limits.  Bodily  abuse  will  long 
be  counterbalanced  by  man's  superb  recuperative  power, 
but  sooner  or  later  there  comes  a  time  when  out-worn 
cells  call  a  halt. 

We  had  lived  for  weeks  on  a  steady  diet  of  withered 
beef  and  tallow.  There  was  no  change,  we  had  no  hot 
meat,  and  never  more  to  eat  than  was  absolutely  neces- 
sary to  keep  life  within  the  body.  We  became  in- 
different to  the  aching  vacant  pain  of  the  stomach. 
Every  organ  had  been  whipped  to  serve  energy  to  the 
all  important  movement  of  our  legs.  The  depletion  of 
energy,  the  lassitude  of  overstrained  limbs,  manifested 
themselves.  The  Eskimos  were  lax  in  the  swing  of  the 
whip  and  indifferent  in  urging  on  the  dogs.  The  dogs 
displayed  the  same  spirit  by  lowered  tails,  limp  ears, 
and  drooping  noses,  as  their  shoulders  dragged  the  sleds 
farther,  ever  farther  from  the  land  of  life. 

A  light  life-sapping  wind  came  from  the  west.  We 
battled  against  it.  We  swung  our  arms  to  fight  it  and 
maintain  circulation,  as  a  swimmer  in  water.  Veering 
a  little  at  times,  it  always  struck  the  face  at  a  piercing 
angle.  It  froze  the  tip  of  my  nose  so  often  that  that 
feature  felt  like  a  foreign  bump  on  my  face.  Our  cheeks 
had  in  like  manner  been  so  often  bleached  in  spots  that 
the  skin  was  covered  with  ugly  scars.  Our  eyes  were 
often  sealed  by  frozen  eyelashes.  The  tear  sack  made 
icicles.  Every  particle  of  breath  froze  as  it  left  the 
nostrils,  and  coated  the  face  in  a  mask  of  ice. 

The  sun  at  times  flamed  the  clouds,  while  the  snow 
glowed  in  burning  tones.  In  the  presence  of  all  this  we 
suffered  the  chill  of  death.  All  Nature  exulted  in  a 


BEYOND  THE  RANGE  OF  LIFE  259 

wave  of  hysteria.  Delusions  took  form  about  us — 
in  mirages,  in  the  clouds.  We  moved  in  a  world  of 
delusions.  The  heat  of  the  sun  was  a  sham,  its  light  a 
torment.  A  very  curious  world  this,  I  thought  dumbly, 
as  we  pushed  our  sleds  and  lashed  our  lagging  dogs. 
Our  footing  was  solid;  there  was  no  motion.  Our 
horizon  was  lined  with  all  the  topographic  features  of  a 
solid  land  scene,  with  mountains,  valleys  and  plains, 
rivers  of  open  water;  but  under  it  all  there  was  the 
heaving  of  a  restless  sea.  Although  nothing  visibly 
moved,  it  was  all  in  motion.  Seemingly  a  solid  crust  of 
earth,  it  imperceptibly  drifts  in  response  to  every  wind. 
We  moved  with  it,  but  ever  took  our  landscape  with  us. 

Of  the  danger  of  this  movement,  of  the  possibility 
of  its  hopelessly  carrying  us  away  from  our  goal,  and 
the  possibility  of  ultimate  starvation,  I  never  lost  con- 
sciousness. Although  the  distance  may  seem  slight, 
now  that  we  had  gone  so  far,  the  last  two  hundred  miles 
seemed  hopelessly  impossible.  With  aching,  stiffened 
legs  we  started  our  continuing  marches  without  en- 
thusiasm, with  little  ambition.  But  marches  we  made- 
distance  leaped  at  times  under  our  swift  running 
feet. 

It  sometimes  now  seems  that  unknown  and  subtle 
forces  of  which  we  are  not  cognizant  supported  me. 
I  could  almost  believe  that  there  were  unseen  beings 
there,  whose  voices  urged  me  in  the  wailing  wind;  who, 
in  my  success,  themselves  sought  soul  peace,  and  who, 
that  I  might  obtain  it,  in  some  strange,  mysterious  way 
succored  and  buoyed  me. 


OVER  POLAR  SEAS  OF  MYSTERY 

THE  MADDENING  TORTURES  OF  A  WORLD  WHERE  ICE 
WATER  SEEMS  HOT,  AND  COLD  KNIVES  BURN  ONE'S 
HANDS — ANGUISHED  PROGRESS  ON  THE  LAST  STRETCH 
OF  TWO  HUNDRED  MILES  OVER  ANCHORED  LAND  ICE- 
DAYS  OF  SUFFERING  AND  GLOOM — THE  TIME  OF 
DESPAIR — "IT  IS  WELL  TO  DIE,"  SAYS  AH-WE-LAH; 

"BEYOND  is  IMPOSSIBLE." 

XVIII 
ONE  HUNDRED  MILES  FROM  THE  POLE 

We  pushed  onward.  We  cracked  our  whips  to  urge 
the  tiring  dogs.  We  forced  to  quick  steps  weary  leg 
after  weary  leg.  Mile  after  mile  of  ice  rolled  under  our 
feet.  The  maddening  influence  of  the  shifting  desert  of 
frost  became  almost  unendurable  in  the  daily  routine. 
Under  the  lash  of  duty  interest  was  forced,  while  the 
merciless  drive  of  extreme  cold  urged  physical  action. 
Our  despair  was  mental  and  physical — the  result  of 
chronic  overwork. 

Externally  there  was  reason  for  rejoicing.  The 
sky  had  cleared,  the  weather  improved,  a  liquid  charm 
of  color  poured  over  the  strange  other-world  into  which 
we  advanced.  Progress  was  good,  but  the  soul  refused 
to  open  its  eyes  to  beauty  or  color.  All  was  a  lifeless 


OVER  POLAR  SEAS  OF  MYSTERY  261 

waste.  The  mind,  heretofore  busy  in  directing  arm  and 
foot,  to  force  a  way  through  miniature  mountains  of 
uplifted  floes,  was  now,  because  of  better  ice,  relieved 
of  that  strain,  but  it  refused  to  seek  diversion. 

The  normal  run  of  hardship,  although  eased,  now 
piled  up  the  accumulated  poison  of  overwork,  and  when 
I  now  think  of  the  terrible  strain  I  fail  to  see  how  a 
workable  balance  was  maintained. 

As  we  passed  the  eighty-sixth  parallel,  the  ice  in- 
creased in  breadth  and  thickness.  Great  hummocks  and 
pressure  lines  became  less  frequent.  A  steady  progress 
was  gained  with  the  most  economical  human  drain 
possible.  The  temperature  ranged  between  36°  and  40° 
below  zero,  Fahrenheit,  with  higher  and  lower  midday 
and  midnight  extremes.  Only  spirit  thermometers  were 
useful,  for  the  mercury  was  at  this  degree  of  frost  either 
frozen  or  sluggish. 

Although  the  perpetual  sun  gave  light  and  color  to 
the  cheerless  waste  we  were  not  impressed  with  any  ap- 
preciable sense  of  warmth.  Indeed,  the  sunbeams  by 
their  contrast  seemed  to  cause  the  frost  of  the  air  to 
pierce  with  a  more  painful  sting.  In  marching  over 
the  golden  glitter,  snow  scalded  our  faces,  while  our 
noses  were  bleached  with  frost.  The  sun  rose  into  zones 
of  fire  and  set  in  burning  fields  of  ice,  but,  in  pain,  we 
breathed  the  chill  of  death. 

In  camp  a  grip  of  the  knife  left  painful  burns  from 
cold  metal.  To  the  frozen  fingers  ice  cold  water  was 
hot.  With  wine-spirits  the  fire  was  lighted,  while  oil 
delighted  the  stomach.  In  our  dreams  Heaven  was  hot, 
the  other  place  was  cold.  All  Nature  was  false;  we 
seemed  to  be  nearing  the  chilled  flame  of  a  new  Hades. 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

We  now  changed  our  working  hours  from  day  to 
night,  beginning  usually  at  ten  o'clock  and  ending  at 
seven.  The  big  marches  and  prolonged  hours  of  travel 
with  which  fortune  favored  us  earlier  were  no  longer 
possible.  Weather  conditions  were  more  important 
in  determining  a  day's  run  than  the  hands  of  the 
chronometers. 

That  I  must  steadily  keep  up  my  notes  and  the 
records  of  observations  was  a  serious  addition  to  my 
daily  task.  I  never  permitted  myself  to  be  careless  in 
regard  to  this,  for  I  never  let  myself  forget  the  impor- 
tance of  such  data  in  plotting  an  accurate  course. 

I  kept  my  records  in  small  notebooks,  writing  very 
fine  with  a  hard  pencil  on  both  sides  of  the  paper.  At 
the  beginning  of  the  journey  I  had  usually  set  down 
the  day's  record  by  candle  light,  but  later,  when  the  sun 
was  shining  both  day  and  night,  I  needed  no  light  even 
inside  the  walls  of  the  igloo,  for  the  sunlight  shone 
strongly  enough  through  the  walls  of  snow.  Shining 
brilliantly  at  times,  I  utilized  the  opportunity  it 
afforded,  every  few  marches,  to  measure  our  shadows. 
The  daily  change  marked  our  advance  Poleward. 

When  storms  threatened,  our  start  was  delayed. 
In  strong  gales  the  march  was  shortened.  But  in  one 
way  or  another  we  usually  found  a  few  hours  in  each 
turn  of  the  dial  during  which  a  march  could  be  forced 
between  winds.  It  mattered  little  whether  we  traveled 
night  or  day — all  hours  and  all  days  were  alike  to  us— 
for  we  had  no  accustomed  time  to  rest,  no  Sundays,  no 
holidays,  no  landmarks,  or  mile-posts  to  pass. 

To  advance  and  expend  the  energy  accumulated 
during  one  sleep  at  the  cost  of  one  pound  of  pemmican 


OVER  POLAR  SEAS  OF  MYSTERY  26 

was  our  sole  aim  in  life.  Day  after  day  our  legs  wer 
driven  onward.  Constantly  new  but  similar  panorama 
rolled  by  us. 

Our  observations  on  April  11,  gave  latitude  87 
20',  longitude  95°  19'.  The  pack  disturbance  of  th 
new  land  was  less  and  less  noted  as  we  progressed  in  th 
northward  movement.  The  fields  became  heavier 
larger  and  less  crevassed.  Fewer  troublesome  old  floe 
and  less  crushed  new  ice  were  encountered.  With  th 
improved  conditions,  the  fire  of  a  racing  spirit  surge< 
up  for  a  brief  spell. 

We  had  now  passed  the  highest  reaches  of  all  ou 
predecessors.  The  inspiration  of  the  Farthest  Nortl 
for  a  brief  time  thrilled  me.  The  time  was  at  hand 
however,  to  consider  seriously  the  possible  necessity  o 
an  early  return. 

Nearly  half  of  the  food  allowance  had  been  used 
In  the  long  marches  supplies  had  been  more  liberall; 
consumed  than  anticipated.  Now  our  dog  teams  wer 
much  reduced  in  numbers.  Because  of  the  cruel  law  o 
the  survival  of  the  fittest,  the  less  useful  dogs  had  gon< 
into  the  stomachs  of  their  stronger  companions.  Wit] 
the  lessening  of  the  number  of  dogs  had  come  at  tfo 
same  time  a  reduction  of  the  weight  of  the  sledge  loads 
through  the  eating  of  the  food.  Now,  owing  to  foo< 
limitations  and  the  advancing  season,  we  could  not  pru 
dently  continue  the  onward  march  a  fortnight  longer. 

We  had  dragged  ourselves  three  hundred  mile 
over  the  Polar  sea  in  twenty-four  days.  Including  de 
lavs  and  detours,  this  gave  an  average  of  nearly  thirteei 


264  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Pole.  The  same  average  advance  would  take  us  to  the 
Pole  in  thirteen  days.  There  were  food  and  fuel  enough 
to  risk  this  adventure.  With  good  luck  the  prize  seemed 
within  our  grasp.  But  a  prolonged  storm,  a  deep  snow- 
fall, or  an  active  ice-pack  would  mean  failure. 

In  new  cracks  I  measured  the  thickness  of  the  ice. 
I  examined  the  water  for  life.  The  technical  details  for 
the  making  and  breaking  of  ice  were  studied,  and  some 
attention  was  given  to  the  altitude  of  uplifted  and  sub- 
merged irregularities.  Atmospheric,  surface  water  and 
ice  temperatures  were  taken,  the  barometer  was  noted, 
the  cloud  formations,  weather  conditions  and  ice  drifts 
were  tabulated.  There  was  a  continuous  routine  of 
work,  but  like  the  effort  of  the  foot  in  the  daily  drive, 
it  became  more  or  less  automatic. 

Running  along  over  seemingly  endless  fields  of  ice, 
the  physical  appearances  now  came  under  more  care- 
ful scrutiny.  I  watched  daily  for  possible  signs  of  fail- 
ing in  the  strength  of  any  of  us,  because  a  serious  dis- 
ability would  now  mean  a  fatal  termination.  A  dis- 
abled man  could  neither  continue  nor  return.  Each 
new  examination  gave  me  renewed  confidence  and  was 
another  reason  to  push  human  endurance  to  the  limit  of 
straining  every  fibre  and  cell. 

As  a  matter  of  long  experience  I  find  life  in  this 
extreme  North  is  healthful  so  long  as  there  is  sufficient 
good  food,  so  long  as  exertion  is  not  overdone.  A  weak- 
ling would  easily  be  killed,  but  a  strong  man  is 
splendidly  hardened  and  kept  in  perfect  physical  trim 
by  sledging  and  tramping  in  this  germless  air.  But, 
as  I  have  said,  sufficient  food  and  not  too  much  exertion 
are  requisites  to  full  safety,  and  in  our  case  we  were 


OVER  POLAR  SEAS  OF  MYSTERY  265 

working  to  the  limit,  with  rations  running  low.  Still, 
the  men  responded  superbly. 

Our  tremendous  exertion  in  forcing  daily  rushing 
marches,  under  occasional  bursts  of  burning  sunbeams, 
provoked  intense  thirst.  Following  the  habit  of  the 
camel,  we  managed  to  take  enough  water  before  starting 
to  keep  sufficient  liquid  in  the  stomach  and  veins  for 
the  ensuing  day's  inarch.  Yet  it  was  painful  to  await 
the  melting  of  ice  at  camping  time. 

In  two  sittings,  evening  and  morning,  each  of  us 
took  an  average  of  three  quarts  of  water  daily.  This 
included  tea  and  also  the  luxury  of  occasional  soup. 
Water  was  about  us  everywhere  in  heaps,  but  before 
the  thirst  could  be  quenched,  several  ounces  of  precious 
fuel,  which  had  been  sledged  for  hundreds  of  miles, 
must  be  used.  And  yet,  this  water,  so  expensive  and  so 
necessary  to  us,  became  the  cause  of  our  greatest  dis- 
comfort. It  escaped  through  pores  of  the  skin,  sat- 
urated the  boots,  formed  a  band  of  ice  under  the  knee 
and  a  belt  of  frost  about  the  waist,  while  the  face  was 
nearly  always  encased  in  a  mask  of  icicles  from  the 
moist  breath.  We  learned  to  take  this  torture  philo- 
sophically. 

With  our  dogs  bounding  and  tearing  onward,  from 
the  eighty-seventh  to  the  eighty-eighth  parallel  we 
passed  for  two  days  over  old  ice  without  pressure  lines 
or  hummocks.  There  was  no  discernible  line  of  de- 
marcation to  indicate  separate  fields,  and  it  was  quite 
impossible  to  determine  whether  we  were  on  land  or  sea 
ice.  The  barometer  indicated  no  perceptible  elevation, 
but  the  ice  had  the  hard,  wavering  surface  of  glacial  ice, 
with  only  superficial  crevasses.  The  water  obtained 


266  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

from  this  was  not  salty.  All  of  the  upper  surface  of 
old  hummock  and  high  ice  of  the  Polar  sea  resolves  into 
unsalted  water.  My  nautical  observations  did  not 
seem  to  indicate  a  drift,  but  nevertheless  my  combined 
tabulations  do  not  warrant  a  positive  assertion  of  either 
land  or  sea;  I  am  inclined,  however,  to  put  this  down  as 
ice  on  low  or  submerged  land. 

The  ice  presented  an  increasingly  cheering  pros- 
pect. A  plain  of  purple  and  blue  ran  in  easy  undula- 
tions to  the  limits  of  vision  without  the  usual  barriers  of 
uplifted  blocks.  Over  it  a  direct  air-line  course  was 
possible.  Progress,  however,  was  quite  as  difficult  as 
over  the  irregular  pack.  The  snow  was  crusted  with 
large  crystals.  An  increased  friction  reduced  the  sled 
speed,  while  the  snow  surface,  too  hard  for  snowshoes, 
was  also  too  weak  to  give  a  secure  footing  to  the  unpro- 
tected boot.  The  loneliness,  the  monotony,  the  hard- 
ship of  steady,  unrelieved  travel  were  keenly  felt. 

Day  after  day  we  pushed  along  at  a  steady  pace 
over  plains  of  frost  and  through  a  mental  desert.  As 
the  eye  opened  at  the  end  of  a  period  of  shivering 
slumber,  the  fire  was  lighted  little  by  little,  the  stomach 
was  filled  with  liquids  and  solids,  mostly  cold — enough 
to  last  for  the  day,  for  there  could  be  no  halt  or  waste 
of  fuel  for  midday  feeding.  We  next  got  into  harness, 
and,  under  the  lash  of  duty,  paced  off  the  day's  pull; 
we  worked  until  standing  became  impossible. 

As  a  man  in  a  dream  I  marched,  set  camp,  ate  and 
tried  to  rest.  I  took  observations  now  without  interest ; 
under  those  conditions  no  man  could  take  an  interest 
in  mathematics.  Eating  became  a  hardship,  for  the 
pemmican,  tasteless  and  hard  as  metal,  was  cold.  Our 


OVER  POLAR  SEAS  OF  MYSTERY     267 

feet  were  numb — it  seemed  fortunate  they  no  longer 
even  ached. 

The  arduous  task  of  building  a  snowhouse  meant 
physical  hardship.  In  this  the  eyes,  no  longer  able  to 
wink,  quickly  closed^  Soon  the  empty  stomach  com- 
plained. Then  the  gastric  wants  were  half  served. 
With  teeth  dropping  to  the  spasm  of  cold  and  skins  in 
an  electric  wave  of  shivers  to  force  animal  heat,  the  boys 
fell  to  unconscious  slumbers,  but  my  lids  did  not  easily 
close.  The  anxiety  to  succeed,  the  eagerness  to  draw 
out  our  food  supply  and  the  task  of  infusing  courage 
into  my  savage  helpers  kept  the  mind  active  while  the 
underfed  blood  filled  the  legs  with  new  power. 

There  was  no  pleasurable  mental  recreation  to  re- 
lieve us;  there  was  nothing  to  arouse  the  soul  from  its 
icy  inclosure.  To  eat,  to  sleep,  endlessly  to  press  one 
foot  ahead  of  the  other — that  was  all  we  could  do.  We 
were  like  horses  driven  wearily  in  carts,  but  we  had  not 
their  advantages  of  an  agreeable  climate  and  a  com- 
fortable stable  at  night.  Daily  our  marches  were  much 
the  same.  Finishing  our  frigid  meal,  we  hitched  the 
dogs  and  lashed  the  sleds. 

In  the  daily  routine  of  our  onward  struggle,  there 
was  an  inhuman  strain  which  neither  words  nor  pictures 
could  adequately  describe.  The  maddening  influence 
of  the  sameness  of  Polar  glitter,  combined  as  it  was  with 
bitter  winds  and  extreme  cold  and  overworked  bodies, 
burned  our  eyes  and  set  our  teeth  to  a  chronic  chatter- 
ing. To  me  there  was  always  the  inspiration  of  ulti- 
mate success.  But  for  my  young  savage  companions, 
it  was  a  torment  almost  beyond  endurance.  They  were, 
however,  brave  and  faithful  to  the  bitter  end,  seldom 


268  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

allowing  hunger  or  weariness  or  selfish  ambition  or 
fierce  passions  seriously  to  interfere  with  the  effort  of 
the  expedition.  We  suffered,  but  we  covered  distance. 

On  the  morning  of  April  13,  the  strain  of  agitating 
torment  reached  the  breaking  point.  For  days  there 
had  been  a  steady  cutting  wind  from  the  west,  which 
drove  despair  to  its  lowest  reaches.  The  west  again 
blackened,  to  renew  its  soul-despairing  blast.  The  frost- 
burn  of  sky  color  changed  to  a  depressing  gray,  streaked 
with  black.  The  snow  was  screened  with  ugly  vapors. 
The  path  was  absolutely  cheerless.  All  this  was  a  dire 
premonition  of  storm  and  greater  torture. 

No  torment  could  be  worse  than  that  never-ceasing 
i-ush  of  icy  air.  It  gripped  us  and  sapped  the  life  from 
us.  Ah-we-lah  bent  over  his  sled  and  refused  to  move. 
I  walked  over  and  stood  by  his  side.  His  dogs  turned 
.and  looked  inquiringly  at  us.  E-tuk-i-shook  came  near 
and  stood  motionless,  like  a  man  in  a  trance,  staring 
blankly  at  the  southern  skies.  Large  tears  fell  from 
Ah-we-lah's  eyes  and  froze  in  the  blue  of  his  own 
shadow.  Not  a  word  was  uttered.  I  knew  that  the 
dreaded  time  of  utter  despair  had  come.  The  dogs 
looked  at  us,  patient  and  silent  in  their  misery.  Silently 
in  the  descending  gloom  we  all  looked  over  the  tremen- 
dous dead-white  waste  to  the  southward.  With  a  tear- 
streaked  and  withered  face,  Ah-we-lah  slowly  said,  with 
a  strangely  shrilling  wail,  ffUnne-sinig-po — Oo-ah-tonie 
i-O'doria — Ooh-ah-tonie  i-o-doria!"  ("It  is  well  to  die- 
Beyond  is  impossible — Beyond  is  impossible!") 


"TOO    WEARY    TO    lil'ILD    HJLOOS    WE    USED   THE    SILK   TEXT" 
A('K<»SS    SEAS    OF    t'UYSTAL    (JLOHY    TO    THE    15OREAL    CENTRE" 


TO  THE  POLE— THE  LAST  HUNDRED 
MILES 

OVER  PLAINS  OF  GOLD  AND  SEAS  OF  PALPITATING  COLOR 
THE  DOG  TEAMS,  WITH  NOSES  DOWN,  TAILS  ERECT, 
DASH  SPIRITEDLY  LIKE  CHARIOT  HORSES — CHANTING 
LOVE  SONGS  THE  ESKIMOS  FOLLOW  WITH  SWINGING 
STEP — TIRED  EYES  OPEN  TO  NEW  GLORY — STEP  BY 
STEP,  WITH  THUMPING  HEARTS  THE  EARTH^S  APEX 

IS   NEARED AT   LAST!   THE   GOAL   IS   REACHED!   THE 

STARS    AND     STRIPES    ARE     FLUNG    TO     THE     FRIGID 
BREEZES  OF  THE  NORTH  POLE ! 

XIX 

BOREAL  CENTER  is  PIERCED 

I  shall  never  forget  that  dismal  hour.  I  shall  never 
forget  that  desolate  drab  scene  about  us — those  endless 
stretches  of  gray  and  dead-white  ice,  that  drab  dull  sky, 
that  thickening  blackness  in  the  west  which  entered  into 
and  made  gray  and  black  our  souls,  that  ominous,  eerie 
and  dreadful  wind,  betokening  a  terrorizing  Arctic 
storm.  I  shall  never  forget  the  mournful  group  before 
me,  in  itself  an  awful  picture  of  despair,  of  man's  ambi- 
tion failing  just  as  victory  is  within  his  grasp.  Ah-we- 
lah,  a  thin,  half-starved  figure  in  worn  furs,  lay  over 
his  sled,  limp,  dispirited,  broken.  In  my  ears  I  can  now 


270  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

hear  his  low  sobbing  words,  I  can  see  the  tears  on  his 
yellow  fissured  face.  I  can  see  E-tuk-i-shook  standing 
gaunt  and  grim,  and  as  he  gazed  yearningly  onward  to 
the  south,  sighing  pitifully,  shudderingly  for  the  home, 
the  loved  one,  An-na-do-a,  left  behind,  whom,  I  could 
tell,  he  did  not  expect  to  see  again. 

It  was  a  critical  moment.  Up  to  this  time,  during 
the  second  week  of  April,  we  had,  by  intense  mental 
force,  goaded  our  wearied  legs  onward  to  the  limit  of 
endurance.  With  a  cutting  wind  in  our  faces,  feeling 
with  each  step  the  cold  more  severely  to  the  marrow  of 
our  bones,  with  our  bodily  energy  and  our  bodily  heat 
decreasing,  we  had  traveled  persistently,  suffering  in- 
tolerable pains  with  every  breath.  Despite  increasing 
despair,  I  had  cheered  my  companions  as  best  I  could; 
I  had  impressed  upon  them  the  constant  nearing  of  my 
goal.  I  had  encouraged  in  them  the  belief  of  nearness 
of  land ;  each  day  I  had  gone  on,  fearing  what  had  now 
come,  the  utter  breaking  of  their  spirits. 

fCUnne-sinikpo-ashuka"    (Yes,  it  is  well  to  die.) 

"Awonga-up-dow-epufaihaF  (Yesterday  I,  too, 
felt  that  way) ,  I  said  to  myself.  The  sudden  extinction 
of  consciousness,  I  thought,  might  be  indeed  a  blessed 
relief.  But  as  long  as  life  persisted,  as  long  as  human 
endurance  could  be  strained,  I  determined  to  continue. 
Desperate  as  was  my  condition,  and  suffering  hellish 
tortures,  the  sight  of  the  despair  of  my  companions  re- 
aroused  me.  Should  we  fail  now,  after  our  long  endur- 
ance, now,  when  the  goal  was  so  near  ? 

The  Pole  was  only  one  hundred  miles  beyond.  The 
attainment  seemed  almost  certain. 

ffAccou-ou-o-toni-ah-yoiinguliik"  (Beyond  to-mor- 


TO  THE  POLE  271 

row  it  will  be  better),  I  urged,  trying  to  essay  a  smile. 
"Igluctoo!"  (Cheer  up!) 

Holding  up  one  hand,  with  a  reach  Poleward, 
bending  five  fingers,  one  after  the  other,  I  tried  to  con- 
vey the  idea  that  in  five  sleeps  the  "Big  Nail"  would 
be  reached,  and  that  then  we  would  turn  (pointing  with 
my  fingers)  homeward. 

ffNoona-me-neulia-capa — ahmisua"  (For  home, 
sweethearts  and  food  in  abundance) ,  I  said. 

"Noona-terronga,  neuliarongita,  ootah — peteron- 
gito"  (Land  is  gone;  loved  ones  are  lost;  signs  of  life 
have  vanished). 

" Tig -i-lay-waong acedia — nellu  ikah-amisua"  (Re- 
turn will  I,  the  sky  and  weather  I  do  not  understand.  It 
is  very  cold) ,  said  Ah-we-lah. 

" '  Atluda-emongwah-ka"  (A  little  farther  come). 
I  pleaded.  Attudu-mikisungwah"  (Only  a  little 
further). 

"Suldnut-nellu"  (The  sun  I  do  not  understand), 
said  E-tuk-i-shook. 

This  had  been  a  daily  complaint  for  some  days — 
the  approaching  equality  of  the  length  of  shadows  for 
night  and  day  puzzled  them.  The  failing  night  dip  of 
the  sun  left  them  without  a  guiding  line  to  give  direction. 
They  were  lost  in  a  landless,  spiritless  world,  in  which 
the  sky,  the  weather,  the  sun  and  all  was  a  mystery. 

I  knew  my  companions  were  brave.  I  was  certain 
of  their  fidelity.  Could  their  mental  despair  be  alle- 
viated, I  felt  convinced  they  could  brace  themselves  for 
another  effort.  I  spoke  kindly  to  them;  I  told  them 
what  we  had  accomplished,  that  they  were  good  and 
brave,  that  their  parents  and  their  sweethearts  would 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

be  proud  of  them,  and  that  as  a  matter  of  honor  we 
must  not  now  fail. 

"Tigishu-conitu"  I  said.    (The  Pole  is  near.) 

"Sinipa  tedliman  dossa-ooahtonie  tomongma  ah 
youngulok  tigilay  toy  hoy/J  (At  the  end  of  five  sleeps 
it  is  finished,  beyond  all  is  well,  we  return  thereafter 
quickly. ) 

"Seko  shudi  iokpok.  Soundh  ha-ah!"  they  replied. 
(On  ice  always  is  not  good.  The  bones  ache.) 

Then  I  said,  "The  ice  is  flat,  the  snow  is  good,  the 
sky  is  clear,  the  Great  Spirit  is  with  us,  the  Pole  is  near !" 

Ah-we-lah  dully  nodded  his  head.  I  noticed,  how- 
ever, he  wiped  his  eyes. 

"Ka-bishuckto-emongwah"  (Come  walk  a  little 
further),  I  went  on.  "Accou  ooahtoni-ahningahna- 
inatluk-tigilay-Inut-noona"  (Beyond  to-morrow  within 
two  moons  we  return  to  Eskimo  lands.) 

"K  is  ah  iglucto-tima-attahta-annona-neuliasing- 
wah"  said  Ah-we-lah.  (At  last,  then  it  is  to  laugh! 
There  we  will  meet  father  and  mother  and  little  wives!) 

"Ashuka-alningahna-matluk"  I  returned.  (Yes, 
in  two  moons  there  will  be  water  and  meat  and  all  in 
plenty.) 

E-tuk-i-shook  gazed  at  me  intently.  His  eyes 
brightened. 

As  I  spoke  my  own  spirits  rose  to  the  final  effort, 
my  lassitude  gave  way  to  a  new  enthusiasm.  I  felt  the 
fire  kindling  for  many  years  aglow  within  me.  The 
goal  was  near;  there  remained  but  one  step  to  the  apex 
of  my  ambition.  I  spoke  hurriedly.  The  two  sat  up 
and  listened.  Slowly  they  became  inspired  with  my 
5ntoxication.  Never  did  I  speak  so  vehemently. 


TO  THE  POLE  273 

E-tuk-i-shook  gripped  his  whip.  "Ka,aga"  (Come, 
go!)  he  said. 

Ah-we-lah,  determined  but  grim,  braced  his  body 
and  shouted  to  the  dogs — "Huk,  Huk,  Huk"  and  then 
to  us  he  said,  ffAga-Ka!"  (Go-come) . 

With  snapping  whip  we  were  off  for  that  last  hun- 
dred miles. 

The  animals  pricked  their  ears,  re-curled  their  tails, 
and  pulled  at  the  traces.  Shouting  to  keep  up  the  forced 
enthusiasm,  we  bounded  forward  on  the  last  lap.  A 
sort  of  wild  gratification  filled  my  heart.  I  knew  that 
only  mental  enthusiasm  would  now  prevent  the  defeat 
which  might  yet  come  from  our  own  bodies  refusing  to 
go  farther.  Brain  must  now  drive  muscle.  Fortunately 
the  sense  of  final  victory  imparted  a  supernormal  mental 
stimulus. 

Gray  ice  hummocks  sped  by  us.  My  feet  were  so 
tired  that  I  seemed  to  walk  on  air.  My  body  was  so 
light  from  weakness  that  I  suppose  I  should  hardly 
have  been  surprised  had  I  floated  upward  from  the  ice 
in  a  gust  of  wind.  I  felt  the  blood  moving  in  my  veins 
and  stinging  like  needles  in  my  joints  as  one  does  when 
suffering  with  neurasthenia.  I  swung  my  axe.  The 
whip  of  my  companions  cut  the  air.  The  dogs  leaped 
over  the  ice,  with  crunching  progress  they  pulled  them- 
selves over  hummocks  much  as  cats  climb  trees.  Dis- 
tance continued  to  fade  behind  us. 

On  April  14,  my  observations  gave  latitude,  88° 
21';  longitude,  95°  52'.  The  wind  came  with  a  satanic 
cut  from  the  west.  There  had  been  little  drift.  But 
with  a  feeling  of  chagrin  I  saw  that  the  ice  before  us 
displayed  signs  of  recent  activity.  It  was  more  ir- 


274  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

regular,  with  open  cracks  here  and  there.  These  we  had 
to  avoid,  but  the  sleds  glided  with  less  friction,  and  the 
weary  dogs  maintained  a  better  speed. 

With  set  teeth  and  newly  sharpened  resolutions, 
we  continued  mile  after  mile  of  that  last  one  hundred. 
More  dogs  had  gone  into  the  stomachs  of  their  hungry 
companions,  but  there  still  remained  a  sufficient  pull  of 
well-tried  brute  force  for  each  sled.  Although  their 
noisy  vigor  had  been  gradually  lost  in  the  long  drag, 
they  still  broke  the  frigid  silence  with  an  occasional  out- 
burst of  howls.  Any  fresh  enthusiasm  from  the  drivers 
was  quickly  responded  to  by  canine  activity. 

We  were  in  good  trim  to  cover  distance  econom- 
ically. Our  sledges  were  light,  our  bodies  were  thin. 
We  had  lost,  since  leaving  winter  camp,  judging  from 
appearances,  from  twenty-five  to  forty  pounds  each. 
All  our  muscles  had  shriveled.  The  dogs  retained 
strength  that  was  amazing.  Stripped  for  the  last  lap, 
one  horizon  after  another  was  lifted. 

From  original  field  papers. — Observations  of  April  14,  1908.  Long 
95-52.  Bar.  29.90  Falling.  Temp.  — 44°.  Clouds  Cu.  St.  &  Alt.  St.  4.  Wind 
1-3.  Mag.  E. 

Noon  0 =22—02—05 

96  = 

0..        ..=22—56—20 


60  |  384 


2  [  44—58—25 
22—29—12 
+2 

$  |  22—31—12 
11—15—36 


60  |  351 


78—53—24 
9 — 21 — 50  9 27 4,1 

9-27-41  88_2i_  5 

Shadow  30^  ft.  (of  tent  pole  6  ft.  above  snow.) 


TO  THE  POLE  275 

In  the  forced  effort  which  followed  we  frequently 
became  overheated.  The  temperature  was  steady  at  44° 
below  zero,  Fahrenheit.  Perspiration  came  with  ease, 
and  with  a  certain  amount  of  pleasure.  Later  followed 
a  train  of  suffering  for  many  days.  The  delight  of  the 
birdskin  shirt  gave  place  to  the  chill  of  a  wet  blanket. 
Our  coats  and  trousers  hardened  to  icy  suits  of  armor. 
It  became  quite  impossible  to  dress  after  a  sleep  without 
softening  the  stiffened  furs  with  the  heat  of  our  bare 
skin.  Mittens,  boots  and  fur  stockings  became  quite 
useless  until  dried  out. 

Fortunately,  at  this  time  the  rays  of  the  sun  were 
warm  enough  to  dry  the  furs  in  about  three  days,  if 
lashed  to  the  sunny  side  of  a  sled  as  we  marched  along, 
and  strangely  enough,  the  furs  dried  out  without  ap- 
parent thawing.  In  these  last  days  we  felt  more  keenly 
the  pangs  of  perspiration  than  in  all  our  earlier  ad- 
ventures. We  persistently  used  the  amber-colored 
goggles.  They  afforded  protection  to  the  eyes,  but  in 
spite  of  every  precaution,  our  distorted,  frozen,  burned 
and  withered  faces  lined  a  map  in  relief,  of  the  hard- 
ships endured  en  route. 

We  were  curious  looking  savages.  The  perpetual 
glitter  of  the  snows  induced  a  squint  of  our  eyes  which 
distorted  our  faces  in  a  remarkable  manner.  The  strong 
light  reflected  from  the  crystal  surface  threw  the  muscles 
about  the  eyes  into  a  state  of  chronic  contraction.  The 
iris  was  reduced  to  a  mere  pin-hole. 

The  strong  winds  and  drifting  snows  necessitated 
the  habit  of  peeping  out  of  the  corners  of  the  eyes. 
Nature,  in  attempting  to  keep  the  ball  from  hardening, 
flushed  it  at  all  times  with  blood.  To  keep  the  seeing 


276  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

windows  of  the  mind  open  required  a  constant  exertion 
of  will  power.  The  effect  was  a -set  of  expressions  of 
hardship  and  wrinkles  which  might  be  called  the  boreal 
squint. 

This  boreal  squint  is  a  part  of  the  russet-bronze 
physiognomy  which  falls  to  the  lot  of  every  Arctic 
explorer.  The  early  winds,  with  a  piercing  temperature, 
start  a  flush  of  scarlet,  while  frequent  frostbites  leave 
figures  in  black.  Later  the  burning  sun  browns  the 
skin;  subsequently,  strong  winds  sap  the  moisture, 
harden  the  skin  and  leave  open  fissures  on  the  face.  The 
human  face  takes  upon  itself  the  texture  and  configura- 
tion of  the  desolate,  wind-driven  world  upon  which  it 
looks. 

Hard  work  and  reduced  nourishment  contract  the 
muscles,  dispel  the  fat  and  leave  the  skin  to  shrivel  in 
folds.  The  imprint  of  the  goggles,  the  set  expression 
of  hard  times,  and  the  mental  blank  of  the  environ- 
ment remove  all  spiritual  animation.  Our  faces  as- 
sumed the  color  and  lines  of  old,  withering,  russet  apples, 
and  would  easily  pass  for  the  mummied  countenances  of 
the  prehistoric  progenitors  of  man. 

In  enforced  efforts  to  spread  out  our  stiffened  legs 
over  the  last  reaches,  there  was  left  no  longer  sufficient 
energy  at  camping  times  to  erect  snow  shelters.  Our 
silk  tent  was  pressed  into  use.  Although  the  tempera- 
ture was  still  very  low,  the  congenial  rays  pierced  the  silk 
fabric  and  rested  softly  on  our  eye  lids  closed  in  heavy 
slumber.  In  strong  winds  it  was  still  necessary  to  erect 
a  sheltering  wall,  whereby  to  shield  the  tent. 

As  we  progressed  over  the  last  one  hundred  mile- 
step,  my  mind  was  divested  of  its  lethargy.  Un- 


TO  THE  POLE  277 

consciously  I  braced  myself.  My  senses  became  more 
keen.  With  a  careful  scrutiny  I  now  observed  the 
phenomena  of  the  strange  world  into  which  fortune  had 
pressed  us — first  of  all  men. 

Step  by  step,  I  invaded  a  world  untrodden  and  un- 
known. Dulled  as  I  was  by  hardship,  I  thrilled  with 
the  sense  of  the  explorer  in  new  lands,  with  the  thrill 
of  discovery  and  conquest.  "Then,"  as  Keats  says,  "felt 
I  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies,  when  a  new  planet 
swims  into  his  ken."  In  this  land  of  ice  I  was  master, 
I  was  sole  invader.  I  strode  forward  with  an  undaunted 
glory  in  my  soul. 

Signs  of  land,  which  I  encouraged  my  companions 
to  believe  were  real,  were  still  seen  every  day,  but  I 
knew,  of  course,  they  were  deceptive.  It  now  seemed  to 
me  that  something  unusual  must  happen,  that  some  line 
must  cross  our  horizon  to  mark  the  important  area  into 
which  we  were  passing. 

Through  vapor-charged  air  of  crystal,  my  eyes  ran 
over  plains  moving  in  brilliant  waves  of  running  colors 
toward  dancing  horizons.  Mirages  turned  things  topsy- 
turvy. Inverted  lands  and  queer  objects  ever  rose  and 
fell,  shrouded  in  mystery.  All  of  this  was  due  to  the 
atmospheric  magic  of  the  continued  glory  of  midnight 
suns  in  throwing  piercing  beams  of  light  through  super- 
imposed strata  of  air  of  varying  temperature  and 
density. 

Daily,  by  careful  measurements,  I  found  that  our 
night  shadows  shortened  and  became  more  uniform  dur- 
ing the  passing  hours  of  the  day,  as  the  shadow  dial  was 
marked. 

With  a  lucky  series  of  astronomical  observations 


278  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

our  position   was  fixed  for  each  stage  of  progress. 

Nearing  the  Pole,  my  imagination  quickened.  A 
restless,  almost  hysterical  excitement  came  over  all  of 
us.  My  boys  fancied  they  saw  bears  and  seals.  I  had 
new  lands  under  observation  frequently,  but  with  a 
change  in  the  direction  of  light  the  horizon  cleared.  We 
became  more  and  more  eager  to  push  further  into  the 
mystery.  Climbing  the  long  ladder  of  latitudes,  there 
was  always  the  feeling  that  each  hour's  work  was  bring- 
ing us  nearer  the  Pole — the  Pole  which  men  had  sought 
for  three  centuries,  and  which,  fortune  favoring,  should 
be  mine ! 

Yet,  I  was  often  so  physically  tired  that  my  mind 
was,  when  the  momentary  intoxications  passed,  in  a 
sense,  dulled.  But  the  habit  of  seeing  and  of  noting 
what  I  had  seen,  had  been  acquired.  The  habit,  yes,  of 
putting  one  foot  in  front  of  the  other,  mile  after  mile, 
through  the  wild  dreariness  of  ice,  the  habit  of  observing, 
even  though  with  aching,  blurred  eyes,  and  noting, 
methodically,  however  wearily,  what  the  tired  eyes  had 
seen. 

From  the  eighty-eighth  to  the  eighty-ninth  parallel 
the  ice  lay  in  large  fields,  the  surface  was  less  irregular 
than  formerly.  In  other  respects  it  was  about  the  same 
as  below  the  eighty-seventh.  I  observed  here  also,  an 
increasing  extension  of  the  range  of  vision.  I  seemed  to 
scan  longer  distances,  and  the  ice  along  the  horizon  had 
a  less  angular  outline.  The  color  of  the  sky  and  the  ice 
changed  to  deeper  purple-blues.  I  had  no  way  of  check- 
ing these  impressions  by  other  observations;  the  eager- 
ness to  find  something  unusual  may  have  fired  my  imag- 
ination, but  since  the  earth  is  flattened  at  the  Pole,  per- 


TO  THE  POLE  279 

haps  a  widened  horizon  would  naturally  be  detected 
there. 

At  eight  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  April  19,  we 
camped  on  a  picturesque  old  field,  with  convenient  hum- 
mocks, to  the  top  of  which  we  could  easily  rise  for  the 
frequent  outlook  which  we  now  maintained.  We  pitched 
our  tent,  and  silenced  the  dogs  by  blocks  of  pemmican. 
New  enthusiasm  was  aroused  by  a  liberal  pot  of  pea- 
soup  and  a  few  chips  of  frozen  meat.  Then  we  bathed 
in  life-giving  sunbeams,  screened  from  the  piercing  air 
by  the  strands  of  the  silk-walled  tent. 

The  day  was  beautiful.  Had  our  sense  of  apprecia- 
tion not  been  blunted  by  accumulated  fatigue  we  should 
have  greatly  enjoyed  the  play  of  light  and  color  in  the 
ever-changing  scene  of  sparkle.  But  in  our  condition 
it  was  but  an  inducement  to  keep  the  eyes  open  and  to 
prolong  interest  long  enough  to  dispel  the  growing  com- 
plaint of  aching  muscles. 

Ah-we-lah  and  E-tuk-i-shook  were  soon  lost  in  pro- 
found sleep,  the  only  comfort  in  their  hard  lives.  I  re- 
mained awake,  as  had  been  my  habit  for  many  preced- 
ing days,  to  get  nautical  observations.  My  longitude 
calculations  lined  us  at  94°  3'.  At  noon  the  sun's  alti- 
tude was  carefully  set  on  the  sextant,  and  the  latitude, 
quickly  reduced,  gave  89°  31'.  The  drift  had  carried  us 
too  far  east,  but  our  advance  was  encouraging. 

I  put  down  the  instrument,  wrote  the  reckonings  in 
my  book.  Then  I  gazed,  with  a  sort  of  fascination,  at 
the  figures.  My  heart  began  to  thump  wildly.  Slowly 
my  brain  whirled  with  exultation.  I  arose  jubilant. 
We  were  only  29  miles  from  the  North  Pole ! 

I  suppose  I  created  quite  a  commotion  about  the 


280  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

little  camp.  E-tuk-i-shook,  aroused  by  the  noise,  awoke 
and  rubbed  his  eyes.  I  told  him  that  in  two  average 
marches  we  should  reach  the  "tigi-shu" — the  big  nail. 
He  sprang  to  his  feet  and  shouted  with  joy.  He  kicked 
Ah-we-lah,  none  too  gently,  and  told  him  the  glad  news. 

Together  they  went  out  to  a  hummock,  and  through 
glasses,  sought  for  a  mark  to  locate  so  important  a  place 
as  the  terrestrial  axis !  If  but  one  sleep  ahead,  it  must  be 
visible !  So  they  told  me,  and  I  laughed.  The  sensation 
of  laughing  was  novel.  At  first  I  was  quite  startled.  I 
had  not  laughed  for  many  days.  Their  idea  was  amus- 
ing, but  it  was  eminently  sensible  from  their  standpoint 
and  knowledge. 

I  tried  to  explain  to  them  that  the  Pole  is  not  visible 
to  the  eye,  and  that  its  position  is  located  only  by  a  re- 
peated use  of  the  various  instruments.  Although  this 
was  quite  beyond  their  comprehension  the  explanation 
entirely  satisfied  their  curiosity.  They  burst  out  in  hur- 
rahs of  joy.  For  two  hours  they  chanted,  danced  and 
shouted  the  passions  of  wild  life.  Their  joy,  however, 
was  in  the  thought  of  a  speedy  turning  back  homeward, 
I  surmised. 

This,  however,  was  the  first  real  sign  of  pleasure  or 
rational  emotion  which  they  had  shown  for  several 
weeks.  For  some  time  I  had  entertained  the  fear  that  we 
no  longer  possessed  strength  to  return  to  land.  This 
unbridled  flow  of  vigor  dispelled  that  idea.  My  heart 
throbbed  with  gladness.  A  font  of  new  strength  seemed 
to  gush  forth  within  me.  Considering  through  what  we 
had  gone,  I  now  marvel  at  the  reserve  forces  latent  in 
us,  and  I  sometimes  feel  that  I  should  write,  not  of 
human  weakness,  but  a  new  gospel  of  human  strength. 


TO  THE  POLE  281 

With  the  Pole  only  twenty-nine  miles  distant,  more 
sleep  was  quite  impossible.  We  brewed  an  extra  pot  of 
tea,  prepared  a  favorite  broth  of  pemmican,  dug  up  a 
surprise  of  fancy  biscuits  and  filled  up  on  good  things 
to  the  limit  of  the  allowance  for  our  final  feast  days.  The 
dogs,  which  had  joined  the  chorus  of  gladness,  were 
given  an  extra  lump  of  pemmican.  A  few  hours  more 
were  agreeably  spent  in  the  tent.  Then  we  started  out 
with  new  spirit  for  the  uttermost  goal  of  our  world. 

Bounding  joyously  forward,  with  a  stimulated 
mind,  I  reviewed  the  journey.  Obstacle  after  obstacle 
had  been  overcome.  Each  battle  won  gave  a  spiritual 
thrill,  and  courage  to  scale  the  next  barrier.  Thus  had 
been  ever,  and  was  still,  in  the  unequal  struggles  be- 
tween human  and  inanimate  nature,  an  incentive  to  go 
onward,  ever  onward,  up  the  stepping-stones  to  ultimate 
success.  And  now,  after  a  life-denying  struggle  in  a 
world  where  every  element  of  Nature  is  against  the 
life  and  progress  of  man,  triumph  came  with  steadily 
measured  reaches  of  fifteen  miles  a  day! 

We  were  excited  to  fever  heat.  Our  feet  were 
light  on  the  run.  Even  the  dogs  caught  the  infectious 
enthusiasm.  They  rushed  along  at  a  pace  which  made 
it  difficult  for  me  to  keep  a  sufficient  advance  to  set  a 
good  course.  The  horizon  was  still  eagerly  searched 
for  something  to  mark  the  approaching  boreal  center. 
But  nothing  unusual  was  seen.  The  same  expanse  of 
moving  seas  of  ice,  on  which  we  had  gazed  for  five  hun- 
dred miles,  swam  about  us  as  we  drove  onward. 

Looking  through  gladdened  eyes,  the  scene  as- 
sumed a  new  glory.  Dull  blue  and  purple  expanses 
were  transfigured  into  plains  of  gold,  in  which  were 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

lakes  of  sapphire  and  rivulets  of  ruby  fire.  Engirdling 
this  world  were  purple  mountains  with  gilded  crests. 
It  was  one  of  the  few  days  on  the  stormy  pack  when  all 
Nature  smiled  with  cheering  lights. 

As  the  day  advanced  beyond  midnight  and  the 
splendor  of  the  summer  night  ran  into  a  clearer  con- 
tinued day,  the  beams  of  gold  on  the  surface  snows 
assumed  a  more  burning  intensity.  Shadows  of  hum- 
mocks and  ice  ridges  became  dyed  with  a  deeper  purple, 
and  in  the  burning  orange  world  loomed  before  us  Titan 
shapes,  regal  and  regally  robed. 

From  my  position,  a  few  hundred  yards  ahead  of 
the  sleds,  with  compass  and  axe  in  hand,  as  usual,  I 
could  not  resist  the  temptation  to  turn  frequently  to  see 
the  movement  of  the  dog  train  with  its  new  fire.  In 
this  backward  direction  the  color  scheme  was  reversed. 
About  the  horizon  the  icy  walls  gleamed  like  beaten 
gold  set  with  gem-spots  of  burning  colors;  the  plains 
represented  every  shade  of  purple  and  blue,  and  over 
them,  like  vast  angel  wings  outspread,  shifted  golden 
pinions.  Through  the  sea  of  palpitating  color,  the  dogs 
came,  with  spirited  tread,  noses  down,  tails  erect  and 
shoulders  braced  to  the  straps,  like  chariot  horses.  In 
the  magnifying  light  they  seemed  many  times  their  nor- 
mal size.  The  young  Eskimos,  chanting  songs  of  love, 
followed  with  easy,  swinging  steps.  The  long  whip 
was  swung  with  a  brisk  crack.  Over  all  arose  a  cloud 
of  frosted  breath,  which,  like  incense  smoke,  became  sil- 
vered in  the  light,  a  certain  signal  of  efficient  motive 
power. 

With  our  destination  reachable  over  smooth  ice,  in 
these  brighter  days  of  easier  travel  our  long  chilled  blood 


TO  THE  POLE  283 

was  stirred  to  double  action,  our  eyes  opened  to  beauty 
and  color,  and  a  normal  appreciation  of  the  wonders  of 
this  new  strange  and  wonderful  world. 

As  we  lifted  the  midnight's  sun  to  the  plane  of  the 
midday  sun,  the  shifting  Polar  desert  became  floored 
with  a  sparkling  sheen  of  millions  of  diamonds,  through 
which  we  fought  a  way  to  ulterior  and  greater  glory. 

Our  leg  cramps  eased  and  our  languid  feet  lifted 
buoyantly  from  the  steady  drag  as  the  soul  arose  to 
effervescence.  Fields  of  rich  purple,  lined  with  run- 
ning liquid  gold,  burning  with  flashes  of  iridescent  col- 
ors, gave  a  sense  of  gladness  long  absent  from  our  weary 
life.  The  ice  was  much  better.  We  still  forced  a  way 
over  large  fields,  small  pressure  areas  and  narrow  leads. 
But,  when  success  is  in  sight,  most  troubles  seem  lighter. 
We  were  thin,  with  faces  burned,  withered,  frozen  and 
torn  in  fissures,  with  clothes  ugly  from  overwear.  Yet 
men  never  felt  more  proud  than  we  did,  as  we  mili- 
tantly  strode  off  the  last  steps  to  the  world's  very 
top! 

Camp  was  pitched  early  in  the  morning  of  April 
20.  The  sun  was  northeast,  the  pack  glowed  in  tones 
of  lilac,  the  normal  westerly  air  brushed  our  frosty  faces. 
Our  surprising  burst  on  enthusiasm  had  been  nursed  to 
its  limits.  Under  it  a  long  march  had  been  made  over 
average  ice,  with  the  usual  result  of  overpowering 
fatigue.  Too  tired  and  sleepy  to  wait  for  a  cup  of  tea, 
we  poured  melted  snow  into  our  stomach  and  pounded 
the  pemmican  with  an  axe  to  ease  the  task  of  the  jaws. 
Our  eyes  closed  before  the  meal  was  finished,  and  the 
world  was  lost  to  us  for  eight  hours.  Waking,  I  took 
observations  which  gave  latitude  89*  46'. 


284  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Late  at  night,  after  another  long  rest,  we  hitched 
the  dogs  and  loaded  the  sleds.  When  action  began,  the 
feeling  came  that  no  time  must  be  lost.  Feverish  im- 
patience seized  me. 

Cracking  our  whips,  we  bounded  ahead.  The  boys 
sang.  The  dogs  howled.  Midnight  of  April  21  had 
just  passed. 

Over  the  sparkling  snows  the  post-midnight  sun 
glowed  like  at  noon.  I  seemed  to  be  walking  in  some 
splendid  golden  realms  of  dreamland.  As  we  bounded 
onward  the  ice  swam  about  me  in  circling  rivers  of  gold. 

E-tuk-i-shook  and  Ah-we-lah,  though  thin  and 
ragged,  had  the  dignity  of  the  heroes  of  a  battle  which 
had  been  fought  through  to  success. 

We  all  were  lifted  to  the  paradise  of  winners  as  we 
stepped  over  the  snows  of  a  destiny  for  which  we  had 
risked  life  and  willingly  suffered  the  tortures  of  an  icy 
hell.  The  ice  under  us,  the  goal  for  centuries  of  brave, 
heroic  men,  to  reach  which  many  had  suffered  terribly 
and  terribly  died,  seemed  almost  sacred.  Constantly 
and  carefully  I  watched  my  instruments  in  recording 
this  final  reach.  Nearer  and  nearer  they  recorded  our 
approach.  Step  by  step,  my  heart  filled  with  a  strange 
rapture  of  conquest. 

At  last  we  step  over  colored  fields  of  sparkle,  climb- 
ing walls  of  purple  and  gold — finally,  under  skies  of 
crystal  blue,  with  flaming  clouds  of  glory,  we  touch 
the  mark!  The  soul  awakens  to  a  definite  triumph; 
there  is  sunrise  within  us,  and  all  the  world  of  night- 
darkened  trouble  fades.  We  are  at  the  top  of  the  world ! 
The  flag  is  flung  to  the  frigid  breezes  of  the  Xorth 
Pole! 


ROUTE  TO  THE  POLE  AND  RETURN 
A  triangle  of  30,000  square  miles  cut  out  of  the  mysterious  unknown 


AT  THE  NORTH  POLE 

OBSERVATIONS  AT  THE   POLE METEOROLOGICAL  AND   AS- 
TRONOMICAL     PHENOMENA SINGULAR.     STABILITY 

AND     UNIFORMITY     OF     THE     THERMOMETER     AND 

BAROMETER A  SPOT  WHERE  ONE^S  SHADOW  IS  THE 

SAME  LENGTH  EACH  HOUR  OF  THE  TWENTY-FOUR 

EIGHT  POLAR  ALTITUDES  OF  THE  SUN 

XX 

FULL  AND  FINAL  PROOFS  OF  THE  ATTAINMENT 

Looking  about  me,  after  the  first  satisfactory  ob- 
servation, I  viewed  the  vacant  expanse.  The  first  real- 
ization of  actual  victory,  of  reaching  my  lifetime's  goal, 
set  my  heart  throbbing  violently  and  my  brain  aglow. 
I  felt  the  glory  which  the  prophet  feels  in  his  vision, 
with  which  the  poet  thrills  in  his  dream.  About  the 
frozen  plains  my  imagination  evoked  aspects  of  gran- 
deur. I  saw  silver  and  crystal  palaces,  such  as  were 
never  built  by  man,  with  turrets  flaunting  "pinions  glo- 
rious, golden."  The  shifting  mirages  seemed  like  the 
ghosts  of  dead  armies,  magnified  and  transfigured,  huge 
and  spectral,  moving  along  the  horizon  and  bearing  the 
wind-tossed  phantoms  of  golden  blood-stained  banners. 

The  low  beating  of  the  wind  assumed  the  throb  of 
martial  music.  Bewildered,  I  realized  all  that  I  had 


AT  THE  NORTH  POLE  287 

suffered,  all  the  pain  of  fasting,  all  the  anguish  of  long 
weariness,  and  I  felt  that  this  was  my  reward.  I  had 
scaled  the  world,  and  I  stood  at  the  Pole ! 

By  a  long  and  consecutive  series  of  observations 
and  mental  tabulations  of  various  sorts  on  our  journey 
northward,  continuing  here,  I  knew,  beyond  peradven- 
ture  of  doubt,  that  I  was  at  a  spot  which  was  as  near  as 
possible,  by  usual  methods  of  determination,  five  hun- 
dred and  twenty  miles  from  Svartevoeg,  a  spot  toward 
which  men  had  striven  for  more  than  three  centuries — a 
spot  known  as  the  North  Pole,  and  where  I  stood  first 
of  white  men.  In  my  own  achievement  I  felt,  that 
dizzy  moment,  that  all  the  heroic  souls  who  had  braved 
the  rigors  of  the  Arctic  region  found  their  own  hopes' 
fulfilment.  I  had  realized  their  dream.  I  had  culmi- 
nated with  success  the  efforts  of  all  the  brave  men  who 
had  failed  before  me.  I  had  finally  justified  their  sac- 
rifices, their  very  death;  I  had  proven  to  humanity 
humanity's  supreme  triumph  over  a  hostile,  death- 
dealing  Nature.  It  seemed  that  the  souls  of  these  dead 
exulted  with  me,  and  that  in  some  sub-strata  of  the  air, 
in  notes  more  subtle  than  the  softest  notes  of  music, 
they  sang  a  paean  in  the  spirit  with  me. 

We  had  reached  our  destination.  My  relief  was 
indescribable.  The  prize  of  an  international  marathon 
was  ours.  Pinning  the  Stars  and  Stripes  to  a  tent-pole, 
I  asserted  the  achievement  in  the  name  of  the  ninety 
millions  of  countrymen  who  swear  fealty  to  that  flag. 
And  I  felt  a  pride  as  I  gazed  at  the  white-and-crimson 
barred  pinion,  a  pride  which  the  claim  of  no  second 
victor  has  ever  taken  from  me. 

My  mental  intoxication  did  not  interfere  with  the 


288 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 


CLIMBING  THE  LADDER  OF 
LATITUDES 


routine  work  which  was 
now  necessary.  Having 
reached  the  goal,  it  was 
imperative  that  all  scien- 
tific observations  be  made 
as  carefully  as  possible,  as 
quickly  as  possible.  To 
the  taking  of  these  I  set 
myself  at  once,  while  my 
companions  began  the 

routine  work  of  unload- 
ing the  sledges  and  build- 
ing an  igloo. 

Our  course  when  ar- 
riving at  the  Pole,  as  near 
as  it  was  possible  to  de- 
termine, was  on  the 
ninety-seventh  meridian. 
The  day  was  April  21, 
1908.  It  was  local  noon. 
The  sun  was  11°  55"  above 
the  magnetic  northern 
horizon.  My  shadow,  a 
dark  purple  -  blue  streak 
with  ill  -  defined  edges, 
measured  twenty-six  feet 
in  length.  The  tent  pole, 
marked  as  a  measuring 
stick,  was  pushed  into  the 
snow,  leaving  six  feet 
above  the  surface.  This 
gave  a  shadow  twenty- 
eight  feet  long. 


AT  THE  NORTH  POLE  *89 

Several  sextant  observations  gave  a  latitude  a  few 
seconds  below  90°,  which,  because  of  unknown  refrac- 
tion and  uncertain  accuracy  of  time,  was  placed  at  90°. 
(Other  observations  on  the  next  day  gave  similar  re- 
sults, although  we  shifted  camp  four  miles  toward  mag- 
netic south.)  A  broken  hand-axe  was  tied  to  the  end 
of  a  life-line;  this  was  lowered  through  a  fresh  break  m 
the  ice,  and  the  angle  which  it  made  with  the  surface 
indicated  a  drift  toward  Greenland.  The  temperature, 
gauged  by  a  spirit  thermometer,  was  37.7°,  F.  The  mer- 
cury thermometer  indicated  — 36°.  The  atmospheric 
pressure  by  the  aneroid  barometer  was  at  29.83.  It 
was  falling,  and  indicated  a  coming  change  in  the 
weather.  The  wind  was  very  light,  and  had  veered 
from  northeast  to  south,  according  to  the  compass  card. 

The  sky  was  almost  clear,  of  a  dark  purple  blue, 
with  a  pearly  ice-blink  or  silver  reflection  extending  east, 
and  a  smoky  water-sky  west,  in  darkened,  ill-defined 
streaks,  indicating  continuous  ice  or  land  toward  Bering 
Sea,  and  an  active  pack,  with  some  open  water,  toward 
Spitzbergen.  To  the  north  and  south  were  wine- 
colored  gold-shot  clouds,  flung  in  long  banners,  with 
ragged-pointed  ends  along  the  horizon.  The  ice  about 
was  nearly  the  same  as  it  had  been  continuously  since 
leaving  the  eighty-eighth  parallel.  It  was  slightly  more 
active,  and  showed,  by  news  cracks  and  oversliding, 
young  ice  signs  of  recent  disturbance. 

The  field  upon  which  we  camped  was  about  three 
miles  long  and  two  miles  wide.  Measured  at  a  new 
crevasse,  the  ice  was  sixteen  feet  thick.  The  tallest 
hummock  measured  twenty-eight  feet  above  water.  The 
snow  lay  in  fine  feathery  crystals,  with  no  surface  crust. 


290  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

About  three  inches  below  the  soft  snow  was  a  sub- 
surface crust  strong  enough  to  carry  the  bodily  weight. 
Below  this  were  other  successive  crusts,  and  a  porous 
snow  in  coarse  crystals,  with  a  total  depth  of  about 
fifteen  inches. 

Our  igloo  was  built  near  one  edge  in  the  lee  of  an 
old  hummock  about  fifteen  feet  high.  Here  a  recent 
bank  of  drift  snow  offered  just  the  right  kind  of  material 
from  which  to  cut  building  blocks.  While  a  shelter  was 
thus  being  walled,  I  moved  about  constantly  to  read  my 
instruments  and  to  study  carefully  the  local  environ- 
ment. 

In  a  geographic  sense  we  had  now  arrived  at  a 
point  where  all  meridians  meet.  The  longitude,  there- 
fore, was  zero.  Time  was  a  negative  problem.  There 
being  no  longitude,  there  can  be  no  time.  The  hour 
lines  of  Greenwich,  of  New  York,  of  Peking,  and  of  all 
the  world  here  run  together.  Figuratively,  if  this  posi- 
tion is  the  pin-point  of  the  earth's  axis,  it  is  possible  to 
have  all  meridians  under  one  foot,  and  therefore  it 
should  be  possible  to  step  from  midnight  to  midday, 
from  the  time  of  San  Francisco  to  that  of  Paris,  from 
one  side  of  the  globe  to  the  other,  as  time  is  measured. 

Here  there  is  but  one  day  and  but  one  night  in  each 
year,  but  the  night  of  six  monhs  is  relieved  by  about  one 
hundred  days  of  continuous  twilight.  Geographically, 
there  was  here  but  one  direction.  It  was  south  on  every 
line  of  the  dial  of  longitude — north,  east  and  west  had 
vanished.  We  had  reached  a  point  where  true  direction 
became  a  paradox  and  a  puzzle.  It  was  south  before  us, 
south  behind  us,  and  south  on  every  side.  But  the  com- 
pass, pointing  to  the  magnetic  Pole  along  the  ninety- 


WHERE  ALL  MERIDIANS  MEET  AND  EVERY  DIRECTION 

IS  SOUTH 

The  Pivotal  Point  on  which  the  earth  turns. 
*Magnetic   Pole 


292  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

seventh  meridian,  was  as  useful  as  ever.  (To  avoid 
statements  easily  misunderstood,  all  our  directions  about 
the  Pole  will  be  given  as  taken  from  the  compass,  and 
without  reference  to  the  geographer's  anomaly  of  its 
being  south  in  every  direction.) 

My  first  noon  observations  gave  the  following  result,  which  is  copied 
from  the  original  paper,  as  it  was  written  at  the  Pole  and  reproduced 
photographically  on  another  page.  April  21,  1908:  Long.,  97-W. ;  Bar., 
29-83;  Temp.,— 37.7;  Clouds  Alt.,  St.,  1;  Wind,  1;  Mag.,  S.;  Iceblink  E.; 
Water  Sky  W. 

Noon  Alt.  0  23—33—25 


2  |  23—35—25 

11—  47—43 

-j-15—  56 


50  12—  3—38 

fi  -9 


25  11—54—38 

300  90 


60  [325  78—  5—22 

5—25  11—54—23 


ll_48—58  89—59—45 

11—54—23 

Shadows  28  ft.  (of  6  ft.  pole). 

Taking  advantage  of  our  brief  stay,  the  boys  set 
up  the  ice-axe  and  drying  sticks,  and  hung  upon  them 
their  perspiration-wetted  and  frosted  furs  to  dry. 
Hanging  out  wet  clothes  and  an  American  flag  at  the 
North  Pole  seemed  an  amusing  incongruity. 

The  puzzled  standpoint  of  my  Eskimos  was  amus- 
ing. They  tried  hard  to  appreciate  the  advantages  of 
finding  this  suppositions  "tigi  shu"  (big  nail),  but 
actually  here,  they  could  not,  even  from  a  sense  of  defer- 
ence to  me  and  my  judgment,  entirely  hide  their  feeling 
of  disappointment. 

On  the  advance  I  had  told  them  that  an  actual  "big 
nail"  would  not  be  found — only  the  point  where  it  ought 


AT  THE  NORTH  POLE 

to  be.  But  I  think  they  really  hoped  that  if  it  had 
actually  disappeared  they  should  find  that  it  had  come 
back  into  place  after  all ! 

In  building  our  igloo  the  boys  frequently  looked 
about  expectantly.  Often  they  ceased  cutting  snow- 
blocks  and  rose  to  a  hummock  to  search  the  horizon  for 
something  which,  to  their  idea,  must  mark  this  impor- 
tant spot,  for  which  we  had  struggled  against  hope  and 
all  the  dictates  of  personal  comforts.  At  each  breath- 
ing spell  their  eager  eyes  picked  some  sky  sign  which  to 
them  meant  land  or  water,  or  the  play  of  some  god  of 
land  or  sea.  The  naive  and  sincere  interest  which  the 
Eskimos  on  occasions  feel  in  the  mystery  of  the  spirit- 
world  gives  them  an  imaginative  appreciation  of  nature 
often  in  excess  of  that  of  the  more  material  and  skeptical 
Caucasian. 

Arriving  at  the  mysterious  place  where,  they  felt, 
something  should  happen,  their  imagination  now  forced 
an  expression  of  disappointment.  In  a  high-keyed  con- 
'dition,  all  their  superstitions  recurred  to  them  with 
startling  reality. 

In  one  place  the  rising  vapor  proved  to  be  the  breath 
of  the  great  submarine  god — the  "Ko-Koydh."  In  an- 
other place,  a  motionless  little  cloud  marked  the  land  in 
which  dwelt  the  "Turndh-hucli-sudk"  the  great  Land 
God,  and  the  air  spirits  were  represented  by  the  differ- 
ent winds,  with  sex  relations. 

Ah-we-lah  and  E-tuk-i-shook,  with  the  astuteness  of 
the  aborigine,  who  reads  Nature  as  a  book,  were  sharp 
enough  to  note  that  the  high  air  currents  did  not  cor- 
respond to  surface  currents ;  for,  although  the  wind  was 
blowing  homeward,  and  changed  its  force  and  direc- 


294  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

tion,  a  few  high  clouds  moved  persistently  in  a  different 
direction. 

This,  to  them,  indicated  a  warfare  among  the  air 
spirits.  The  ice  and  snow  were  also  animated.  To 
them  the  whole  world  presented  a  rivalry  of  conflicting 
spirits  which  offered  never-ending  topics  of  conver- 
sation. 

As  the  foot  pressed  the  snow,  its  softness,  its  re- 
bound, or  its  metallic  ring  indicated  sentiments  of 
friendliness  or  hostility.  The  ice,  by  its  color,  move- 
ment or  noise,  spoke  the  humor  of  its  animation,  or  that 
of  the  supposed  life  of  the  restless  sea  beneath  it.  In 
interpreting  these  spirit  signs,  the  two  expressed  con- 
siderable difference  of  opinion.  Ah-we-lah  saw  dra- 
matic situations  .and  became  almost  hysterical  with 
excitement;  E-tuk-i-shook  saw  only  a  monotone  of  the 
normal  play  of  life.  Such  was  the  trend  of  interest  and 
conversation  as  the  building  of  the  igloos  was  completed. 

Contrary  to  our  usual  custom,  the  dogs  had  been 
allowed  to  rest  in  their  traces  attached  to  the  sleds. 
Their  usual  malicious  inquisitiveness  exhausted,  they 
were  too  tired  to  examine  the  sleds  to  steal  food.  But 
now,  as  the  house  was  completed,  holes  were  chipped 
with  a  knife  in  ice-shoulders,  through  which  part  of  a 
trace  was  passed,  and  each  team  was  thus  securely 
fastened  to  a  ring  cut  in  ice-blocks.  Then  each  dog 
was  given  a  double  ration  of  pemmican.  Their  pleasure 
was  expressed  by  an  extra  twist  of  the  friendly  tails  and 
an  extra  note  of  gladness  from  long-contracted  stom- 
achs. ,  Finishing  their  meal,  they  curled  up  and  warmed 
the  snow,  from  which  they  took  an  occasional  bite  to 
furnish  liquid  for  their  gastric  economy.  Almost  two 


AT  THE  NORTH  POLE  295 

days  of  rest  followed,  and  this  was  the  canine  celebra- 
tion of  the  Polar  attainment. 

We  withdrew  to  the  inside  of  the  dome  of  snow- 
blocks,  pulled  in  a  block  to  close  the  doors,  spread  out 
our  bags  as  beds  on  the  platform  of  leveled  snow,  pulled 
off  boots  and  trousers,  and  slipped  half-length  into  the 
bristling  reindeer  furs.  We  then  discussed,  with 
chummy  congratulations,  the  success  of  our  long  drive 
to  the  world's  end. 

While  thus  engaged,  the  little  Juel  stove  piped  the 
cheer  of  the  pleasure  of  ice-water,  soon  to  quench  our 
chronic  thirst.  In  the  meantime,  Ah-we-lah  and  E-tuk- 
i-shook  pressed  farther  and  farther  into  their  bags, 
pulled  over  the  hoods,  and  closed  their  eyes  to  an  over- 
powering fatigue.  But  my  lids  did  not  easily  close.  I 
watched  the  fire.  More  ice  went  into  the  kettle.  With 
the  satisfaction  of  an  ambition  fulfilled,  I  peeped  out 
occasionally  through  the  pole-punched  port,  and  noted 
the  horizon  glittering  with  gold  and  purple. 

Quivers  of  self -satisfying  joy  ran  up  my  spine  and 
relieved  the  frosty  mental  bleach  of  the  long-delayed 
Polar  anticipation. 

In  due  time  we  drank,  with  grateful  satisfaction, 
large  quantities  of  ice-water,  which  was  more  delicious 
than  any  wine.  A  pemmican  soup,  flavored  with  musk 
ox  tenderloins,  steaming  with  heat — a  luxury  seldom 
enjoyed  in  our  camps — next  went  down  with  warming, 
satisfying  gulps.  This  was  followed  by  a  few  strips 
of  frozen  fresh  meat,  then  by  a  block  of  pemmican. 
Later,  a  few  squares  of  musk  ox  suet  gave  the  taste  of 
sweets  to  round  up  our  meal.  Last  of  all,  three  cups 
of  tea  spread  the  chronic  stomach-folds,  after  which  we 


296  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

reveled  in  the  sense  of  fulness  of  the  best  meal  of 
many  weeks. 

With  full  stomachs  and  the  satisfaction  of  a  worthy 
task  well  performed,  we  rested. 

We  had  reached  the  zenith  of  man's  Ultima  Thule, 
which  had  been  sought  for  more  than  three  centuries. 
In  comfortable  berths  of  snow  we  tried  to  sleep,  turning 
with  the  earth  on  its  northern  axis. 

But  sleep  for  me  was  impossible.  At  six  o'clock, 
or  six  hours  after  our  arrival  at  local  noon,  I  arose,  went 
out  of  the  igloo,  and  took  a  double  set  of  observations. 
Returning,  I  did  some  figuring,  lay  down  on  my  bag, 
and  at  ten  o'clock,  or  four  hours  later,  leaving  Ah-we-lah 
to  guard  the  camp  and  dogs,  E-tuk-i-shook  joined  me  to 
make  a  tent  camp  about  four  miles  to  the  magnetic 
south.  My  object  was  to  have  a  slightly  different  posi- 
tion for  subsequent  observations. 

Placing  our  tent,  bags  and  camp  equipment  on  a 
sled,  we  pushed  it  over  the  ice  field,  crossed  a  narrow 
lead  sheeted  with  young  ice,  and  moved  on  to  another 
field  which  seemed  to  have  much  greater  dimensions. 
We  erected  the  tent  not  quite  two  hours  later,  in  time 
for  a  midnight  observation.  These  sextant  readings  of 
the  sun's  altitude  were  continued  for  the  next  twenty- 
four  hours. 

In  the  idle  times  between  observations,  I  went  over 
to  a  new  break  between  the  field  on  which  we  were 
camped  and  that  on  which  Ah-we-lah  guarded  the  dogs. 
Here  the  newly- formed  sheets  of  ice  slid  over  each  other 
as  the  great,  ponderous  fields  stirred  to  and  fro.  A 
peculiar  noise,  like  that  of  a  crying  child,  arose.  It 
came  seemingly  from  everywhere,  intermittently,  in 


AT  THE  NORTH  POLE  297 

successive  crying  spells.  Lying  down,  and  putting  my 
fur-cushioned  ear  to  the  edge  of  the  old  ice,  I  heard  a 
distant  thundering  noise,  the  reverberations  of  the 
moving,  grinding  pack,  which,  by  its  wind-driven  sweep, 
was  drifting  over  the  unseen  seas  of  mystery.  In  an 
effort  to  locate  the  cry,  I  searched  diligently  along  the 
lead.  I  came  to  a  spot  where  two  tiny  pieces  of  ice 
served  as  a  mouthpiece.  About  every  fifteen  seconds 
there  were  two  or  three  sharp,  successive  cries.  With 
the  ice-axe  I  detached  one.  The  cries  stopped;  but 
other  cries  were  heard  further  along  the  line. 

The  time  for  observations  was  at  hand,  and  I  re- 
turned to  take  up  the  sextant.  Returning  later  to  the 
lead,  to  watch  the  seas  breathe,  the  cry  seemed  stilled. 
The  thin  ice-sheets  were  cemented  together,  and  in  an 
open  space  nearby  I  had  an  opportunity  to  study  the 
making  and  breaking  of  the  polar  ice. 

That  tiny  film  of  ice  which  voiced  the  baby  cries 
spreads  the  world's  most  irresistible  power.  In  its 
making  we  have  the  nucleus  for  the  origin  of  the  polar 
pack,  that  great  moving  crust  of  the  earth  which 
crunches  ships,  grinds  rocks,  and  sweeps  mountains  into 
the  sea.  Beginning  as  a  mere  microscopic  crystal,  suc- 
cessive crystals,  by  their  affinity  for  each  other,  unite  to 
make  a  disc.  These  discs,  by  the  same  law  of  cohesion, 
assemble  and  unite.  Now  the  thin  sheet,  the  first  sea 
ice,  is  complete,  and  either  rests  to  make  the  great  field 
of  ice,  or  spreads  from  floe  to  floe  and  from  field  to 
field,  thus  spreading,  bridging  and  mending  the  great 
moving  masses  which  cover  the  mid-polar  basin. 

Another  law  of  nature  was  solved  by  a  similar 
insignificant  incident.  In  spreading  our  things  out  to 


298  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

air  and  dry  (for  things  will  dry  in  wind  and  sun,  even 
at  a  very  low  temperature),  two  pieces  of  canvas  were 
thrown  on  a  hummock.  It  was  a  white  canvas  sled- 
cover  and  a  black  strip  of  canvas,  in  which  the  boat  fit- 
tings were  wrapped.  When  these  strips  of  canvas  were 
lifted  it  was  found  that  under  the  part  of  the  black 
canvas,  resting  on  a  slope  at  right  angles  to  the  sun, 
the  snow  had  melted  and  recongealed.  Under  the  white 
canvas  the  snow  had  not  changed.  The  temperature 
was  — 41°;  we  had  felt  no  heat,  but  this  black  canvas 
had  absorbed  enough  heat  from  a  feeble  sun  to  melt 
the  snow  beneath  it.  This  little  lesson  in  physics  began 
to  interest  me,  and  on  the  return  many  similar  experi- 
ments were  made.  As  the  long,  tedious  marches  were 
made,  I  asked  myself  the  questions:  Why  is  snow 
white?  Why  is  the  sky  blue?  And  why  does  black 
fourn  snow  when  white  does  not  ? 

Little  by  little,  in  the  long  drive  of  monotony,  sat- 
isfactory answers  came  to  these  questions.  Thus,  in 
seeking  abstract  knowledge,  the  law  of  radiation  was 
thoroughly  examined.  In  doing  this,  there  came  to  me 
slowly  the  solution  of  various  problems  of  animal  life, 
and  eventually  there  was  uncovered  what  to  me  proved 
a  startling  revelation  in  the  incidents  that  led  up  to 
animal  coloring  in  the  Arctic.  For  here  I  found  that 
the  creatures'  fur  and  feathers  were  colored  in  accord 
with  their  needs  of  absorbing  external  heat  or  of  con- 
serving internal  heat.  The  facts  here  indicated  will  be 
presented  later,  when  we  deal  with  the  snow-fitted  crea- 
tures at  close  range. 

One  of  the  impressions  which  I  carried  with  me  of 
this  night  march  was  that  the  sun  seemed  low — lower, 


AT  THE  NORTH  POLE  299 

indeed,  than  that  of  midday,  which,  in  reality,  was  not 
true,  for  the  observations  placed  it  nine  minutes  higher. 
This  was  an  indication  of  the  force  of  habit.  In  the 
northward  march  we  had  noted  a  considerable  relative 
difference  in  the  height  of  the  night  sun  and  that  of  the 
day.  Although  this  difference  had  vanished  now,  the 
mind  at  times  refused  to  grasp  the  remarkable  change.* 

At  the  Pole  I  was  impressed  by  a  peculiar  uni- 
formity in  the  temperature  of  the  atmosphere  through- 
out the  twenty- four  hours,  and  also  by  a  strange  mono- 
tone in  color  and  light  of  sea  and  sky.  I  had  begun 
to  observe  this  as  I  approached  the  boreal  center.  The 
strange  equability  of  light  and  color,  of  humidity  and  of 
air  temperatures  extended  an  area  one  hundred  miles 
about  the  Pole.  This  was  noted  both  on  my  coming 
and  going  over  this  district. 

Approaching  the  Pole,  and  as  the  night  sun  grad- 
ually lifted,  an  increasing  equalization  of  the  tempera- 
ture of  night  and  day  followed.  Three  hundred  miles 
from  the  Pole  the  thermometer  at  night  had  been  from 
10°  to  20°  lower  than  during  the  day.  There  the  shiver- 
ing chill  of  midnight  made  a  strong  contrast  to  the  burn- 
ing, heatless  glitter  of  midday.  At  the  Pole  the  ther- 
mometer did  not  rise  or  fall  appreciably  for  certain 
fixed  hours  of  the  day  or  night,  but  remained  almost 
uniform  during  the  entire  twenty-four  hours. 

*  After  trying  to  explain  this  impression  fifteen  months  later  to  a 
Swiss  professor,  who  spoke  little  English,  he  quoted  me  as  saying  that  the 
sun  at  night  about  the  Pole  was  much  lower  than  at  noon.  No  such 
ridiculous  remark  was  ever  made.  In  reality  the  eye  did  not  detect  any 
difference  in  the  distance  between  the  sun  and  the  horizon  through  the  next 
twenty- four  hours.  There  was  no  visible  rise  or  set,  the  night  dip  of  the 
nocturnal  swing  of  the  sun  was  entirely  eliminated.  We  had,  however, 
several  ways  of  checking  this  important  phenomena,  which  will  be  intro- 
duced later. 


300  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

This,  to  a  less  notable  extent,  was  true  also  of  the 
barometer.  Farther  south  there  had  been  a  difference 
in  the  day  and  night  range  of  the  barometer.  Here, 
although  the  night  winds  continued  more  actively  than 
those  of  the  day,  the  barometer  was  less  variable  than  at 
any  time  on  my  journey. 

At  the  Pole  the  tendency  of  change  in  force  and 
direction  of  air  currents,  observed  farther  south,  for 
morning  and  evening  periods,  was  no  longer  noted.  But 
when  strong  winds  brushed  the  pack,  a  good  deal  of  the 
Polar  equalization  gave  place  to  a  radical  difference, 
giving  a  period  for  high  and  low  temperatures;  which 
period,  however,  did  not  correspond  to  the  usual  hours 
of  day  or  night.  The  winds,  therefore,  seemed  to  carry 
to  us  the  sub-Polar  inequality  of  atmospheric  variation 
in  temperature  and  pressure.  Many  of  the  facts  bear- 
ing upon  this  problem  were  not  learned  until  later. 
Subsequently,  I  learned,  also,  that  strong  winds  often 
disturb  the  Polar  atmospheric  sameness ;  but  all  is  given 
here  because  of  the  striking  impression  which  it  made 
upon  me  at  this  time. 

In  the  region  about  the  Pole  I  observed  that, 
although  there  were  remarkable  and  beauteous  color 
blendings  in  the  sky,  the  intense  contrasts  and  the  spec- 
tacular display  of  cloud  effects,  seen  in  more  southern 
regions,  were  absent. 

A  color  suffusion  is  common  throughout  the  entire 
Arctic  zone.  Light,  pouring  from  the  low-lying  sun, 
is  reflected  from  the  ice  in  an  indescribable  blaze.  From 
millions  of  ice  slopes,  with  millions  and  millions  of  tiny 
reflecting  surfaces,  each  one  a  mirror,  some  large,  some 
smaller  than  specks  of  diamond  dust,  this  light  is  sent 


AT    THE    POLE — -\VE    \YEKE    THE    ONLY    1TLSAT1NG    CREATURES    IX    A 
PEAD    WORLD   OF    ICE," 


AT  THE  NORTH  POLE  301 

back  in  different  directions  in  burning  waves  to  the  sky. 
A  liquid  light  seems  forced  back  from  the  sky  into  every 
tiny  crevice  of  this  be  jeweled  wonderland.  One  color 
invariably  predominates  at  a  time.  Sometimes  the  ice 
and  air  and  sky  are  suffused  with  a  hue  of  rose,  again  of 
orange,  again  of  a  light  alloyed  yellow,  again  blue ;  and, 
as  we  get  farther  north,  more  dominantly  purple.  Far- 
ther south,  in  our  journey  northward,  we  had  viewed 
color  effects  in  reality  incomparably  more  beautiful  than 
those  in  the  regions  about  the  Pole.  The  sun,  farther 
south,  in  rising  and  setting,  and  with  limitless  changes 
of  polarized  and  refracted  light,  passing  through  strata 
of  atmosphere  of  varying  depths  of  different  density, 
produces  kaleidoscopic  changes  of  burning  color. 

At  the  Pole  there  were  sunbursts,  but  because  of 
the  slight  change  in  the  sun's  dip  to  the  horizon,  the  pre- 
vailing light  was  invariably  in  shades  running  to  purple. 
At  first  my  imagination  evoked  a  more  glowing  wonder 
than  in  reality  existed ;  as  the  hours  wore  on,  and  as  the 
wants  of  my  body  asserted  themselves,  I  began  to  see 
the  vacant  spaces  with  a  disillusionizing  eye. 

The  set  of  observations  given  here,  taken  every  six 
hours,  from  noon  on  April  21  to  midnight  on  April  22, 
1908,  fixed  our  position  with  reasonable  certainty. 

These  figures  do  not  give  the  exact  position  for  the 
normal  spiral  ascent  of  the  sun,  which  is  about  fifty  sec- 
onds for  each  hour,  or  five  minutes  for  each  six  hours; 
but  the  uncertainties  of  error  by  refraction  and  ice-drift 
do  not  permit  such  accuracy  of  observations.  These 
figures  are  submitted,  therefore,  not  to  establish  the  pin- 
point accuracy  of  our  position,  but  to  show  that  we  had 
approximately  reached  a  spot  where  the  sun,  throughout 


302  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

the  twenty-four  hours,  circled  the  heavens  in  a  line 
nearly  parallel  to  the  horizon. 

THE  SUN'S  TRUE  CENTRAL  ALTITUDE  AT  THE  POLE. 
April  21  and  22,  1908. 

Seven  successive  observations,  taken  every  six  hours. 

Each  observation  is  reduced  for  an  instrumental  error  of  -f- 2'. 

For  semi-diameter  and  also  for  refraction  and  parallax,  — 9'. 

The  seven  reductions  are  each  calculated  from  two  sextant  readings, 
generally  of  an  upper  and  lower  limb. 

(TAKEN    FROM    MY    FIELD 

NOTES.) 

April  21,  1908,  97th  meridian  local 
time — 12  o'clock  noon — 11° — 54' — 40" 
6  P.  M.  (same  camp).  12—00—10 
Moved  camp  4  miles  magnetic  South 
12  o'clock  (midnight)  12—  3—50 

April  22nd,  6  A.  M.  12—9-30 

12  o'clock  noon  12 — 14 — 20 

6  P.  M.  12— 18-^iO 

12  o'clock  (midnight)  12—25—10 
Temperature,  — 41.  Barometer,  30.05. 
Shadow  271/0  feet  (of  6-foot  pole). 

With  the  use  of  the  sextant,  the  artificial  horizon, 
pocket  chronometers,  and  the  usual  instruments  and 
methods  of  explorers,  our  observations  were  continued 
and  our  positions  were  fixed  with  the  most  painstak- 
ingly careful  safeguards  possible  against  inaccuracy. 
The  value  of  all  such  observations  as  proof  of  a  Polar 
success,  however,  is  open  to  such  interpretation  as  the 
future  may  determine.  This  applies,  not  only  to  me, 
but  to  anyone  who  bases  any  claim  upon  them. 

To  me  there  were  many  seemingly  insignificant 
facts  noted  in  our  northward  progress  which  left  the 
imprint  of  milestones.  Our  footprints  marked  a  road 
ever  onward  into  the  unknown.  Many  of  these  almost 
unconscious  reckonings  took  the  form  of  playful  im- 
pressions, and  were  not  even  at  the  time  written  down. 

In  the  first  press  reports  of  my  achievement  there 
was  not  space  to  go  into  minute  details,  nor  did  the  pres- 


AT  THE  NORTH  POLE  303 

entation  of  the  subject  permit  an  elaboration  on  all  the 
data  gathered.  But  now,  in  the  light  of  a  better  per- 
spective, it  seems  important  that  every  possible  phase  of 
the  minutest  detail  be  presented.  For  only  by  a  careful 
consideration  of  every  phase  of  every  phenomena  en 
route  can  a  true  verdict  be  obtained  upon  this  widely 
discussed  subject  of  Polar  attainment. 

And  now,  right  here,  I  want  you  to  consider  care- 
fully with  me  one  thing  which  made  me  feel  sure  that 
we  had  reached  the  Pole.  This  is  the  subject  of  shad- 
ows— our  own  shadows  on  the  snow-covered  ice.  A 
seemingly  unimportant  phenomenon  which  had  often 
been  a  topic  of  discussion,  and  so  commonplace  that  I 
only  rarely  referred  to  it  in  my  notebooks,  our  own 
shadows  on  the  snow-cushioned  ice  had  told  of  north- 
ward movement,  and  ultimately  proved  to  my  satisfac- 
tion that  the  Pole  had  been  reached. 

In  our  northward  progress — to  explain  my  shadow 
observations  from  the  beginning — for  a  long  time  after 
our  start  from  Svortevoeg,  our  shadows  did  not  per- 
ceptibly shorten  or  brighten,  to  my  eyes.  The  natives, 
however,  got  from  these  shadows  a  never-ending  variety 
of  topics  of  conversation.  They  foretold  storms,  located 
game  and  read  the  story  of  home  entanglements.  Far 
from  land,  far  from  every  sign  of  a  cheering,  solid  earth, 
wandering  with  our  shadows  over  the  hopeless  desola- 
tion of  the  moving  seas  of  glitter,  I,  too,  took  a  keen 
interest  in  the  blue  blots  that  represented  our  bodies. 
At  noon,  by  comparison  with  later  hours,  they  were 
sharp,  short,  of  a  dark,  restful  blue.  At  this  time  a 
thick  atmosphere  of  crystals  rested  upon  the  ice  pack, 
and  when  the  sun  sank  the  strongest  purple  rays  could 


Shadow-circle  about  250 
miles  from  the  Pole.  Circle 
from  which  extend  radiat- 
ing shadow-lines  mark  po- 
sition of  man. 


Shadow-circle  when  nearing 
the  Pole,  showing  less  differ- 
ence in  length  during  the 
changing  hours. 


Shadow-circle  at  the  Pole; 
standing  on  the  same  spot, 
at  each  hour,  one's  shadow 
is  always  apparently  of  the 
same  length. 


SHADOW-CIRCLES  INDICATING  THE  APPROACH  TO  THE  POLE 

Showing  approximately  the  relative  length  of  a  man's  shadow 

for  each  hour  of  the  twenty-four-hour  day. 


AT  THE  NORTH  POLE  305 

not  penetrate  the  frosty  haze.  Long  before  the  time  for 
sunset,  even  on  clear  days,  the  sun  was  lost  in  low  clouds 
of  drifting  needles. 

After  passing  the  eighty-eighth  parallel  there  was 
a  notable  change  in  our  shadows.  The  night  shadow 
lengthened;  the  day  shadow,  by  comparison,  shortened. 
The  boys  saw  in  this  something  which  they  could  not 
understand.  The  positive  blue  grew  .to  a  permanent 
purple,  and  the  sharp  outlines  ran  to  vague,  indeter- 
minate edges. 

Now  at  the  Pole  there  was  no  longer  any  difference 
in  length,  color  or  sharpness  of  outline  between  the 
shadow  of  the  day  or  night. 

"What  does  it  all  mean?"  they  asked.  The  Eski- 
mos looked  with  eager  eyes  at  me  to  explain,  but  my 
vocabulary  was  not  comprehensive  enough  to  give  them 
a  really  scientific  explanation,  and  also  my  brain  was  too 
weary  from  the  muscular  poison  of  fatigue  to  frame 
words. 

The  shadows  of  midnight  and  those  of  midday  were 
the  same.  The  sun  made  a  circle  about  the  heavens  in 
which  the  eye  detected  no  difference  in  its  height  above 
the  ice,  either  night  or  day.  Throughout  the  twenty- 
four  hours  there  was  no  perceptible  rise  or  set  in  the 
sun's  seeming  movement.  Now,  at  noon,  the  shadow 
represented  in  its  length  the  altitude  of  the  sun — about 
twelve  degrees.  At  six  o'clock  it  was  the  same.  At 
midnight  it  was  the  same.  At  six  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing it  was  the  same. 

A  picture  of  the  snowhouse  and  ourselves,  taken  at 
the  same  time  and  developed  a  year  later,  gives  the  same 
length  of  shadow.  The  compass  pointed  south.  The 


306 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 


•ocLocM 

SHADOW 


At  a  latitude  about  New  York,  a  man's  shadow  lengthens 
hour  by  hour  as  the  sun  descends  toward  the  horizon  at 
nightfall. 

night  drop  of  the  thermometer  had  vanished.  Let  us, 
for  the  sake  of  argument,  grant  that  all  our  instru- 
mental observations  are  wrong.  Here  is  a  condition  of 
things  in  which  I  believed,  and  still  believe,  the  eye,  with- 
out instrumental  assistance,  places  the  sun  at  about  the 


At  the  North  Pole,  a  man's  shadow  is  of  equal  length 
during  the  entire  twenty-four  hours,  since  the  sun  moves 
spirally  around  the  heavens  at  about  the  same  apparent 
height  above  the  horizon  throughout  the  twenty-four-hour 
day. 


AT  THE  NORTH  POLE  307 

same  height  for  every  hour  of  the  day  and  night.  It  is 
only  on  the  earth's  'axis  that  such  an  observation  is 
possible. 

There  was  about  us  no  land.  No  fixed  point.  Ab- 
solutely nothing  upon  which  to  rest  the  eye  to  give  the 
sense  of  location  or  to  judge  distance. 

Here  everything  moves.  The  sea  breathes,  and 
lifts  the  crust  of  ice  which  the  wind  stirs.  The  pack 
ever  drifts  in  response  to  the  pull  of  the  air  and  the 
drive  of  the  water.  Even  the  sun,  the  only  fixed  dot 
in  this  stirring,  restless  world,  where  all  you  see  is,  with- 
out your  seeing  it,  moving  like  a  ship  at  sea,  seems  to 
have  a  rapid  movement  in  a  gold-flushed  circle  not  far 
above  endless  fields  of  purple  crystal;  but  that  move- 
ment is  never  higher,  never  lower — always  in  the  same 
fixed  path.  The  instruments  detect  a  slight  spiral 
ascent,  day  after  day,  but  the  eye  detects  no  change. 

Although  I  had  measured  our  shadows  at  times  on 
the  northward  march,  at  the  Pole  these  shadow  nota- 
tions were  observed  with  the  same  care  as  the  measured 
altitude  of  the  sun  by  the  sextant.  A  series  was  made 
on  April  22,  after  E-tuk-i-shook  and  I  had  left  Ah- 
we-lah  in  charge  of  our  first  camp  at  the  Pole.  We 
made  a  little  circle  for  our  feet  in  the  snow.  E-tuk- 
i-shook  stood  in  the  foot  circle.  At  midnight  the  first 
line  was  cut  in  the  snow  to  the  end  of  his  shadow,  and 
then  I  struck  a  deep  hole  with  the  ice-axe.  Every  hour 
a  similar  line  was  drawn  out  from  his  foot.  At  the  end 
of  twenty-four  hours, .  with  the  help  of  Ah-we-lah,  a 
circle  was  circumscribed  along  the  points,  which  marked 
the  end  of  the  shadow  for  each  hour.  The  result  is 
represented  in  the  snow  diagram  on  the  next  page. 


SHADOW  DIAL  AT  THE  POLE 


At  the  Pole,  a  man's  shadow  is  about  the  same  length  for  every  hour  of  the 
double  day.  When  a  shadow  line  is  drawn  in  the  snow  from  a  man's  foot  in  a 
marked  dial,  the  human  shadows  take  the  place  of  the  hands  of  a  clock  and 
mark  the  time  by  compass  bearing.  The  relative  length  of  these  shadows  also 
give  the  latitude  or  a  man's  position  north  or  south  of  the  equator.  When 
during  two  turns  around  the  clock  dial,  the  shadows  are  all  of  about  equal  length, 
the  position  of  the  earth's  axis  is  positively  reached — even  if  all  other  obser- 
vations fail.  This  simple  demonstration  is  an  indisputable  proof  of  being  on 
the  North  Pole. 


AT  THE  NORTH  POLE 


309 


In  the  northward  march  we  did  not  stay  up  all  of 
bedtime  to  play  with  shadow  circles.  But,  at  this  time, 
to  E-tuk-i-shook  the  thing  had  a  spiritual  interest.  To 
me  it  was  a  part  of  the  act  of  proving  that  the  Pole  had 
been  attained.  For  only  about  the  Pole,  I  argued, 
could  all  shadows  be  of  equal  length.  Because  of  this 
combination  of  keen  interests,  we  managed  to  find  an 
excuse,  even  during  sleep  hours,  to  draw  a  line  on  our 
shadow  circle. 

Here,  then,  I  felt,  was  an  important  observation 
placing  me  with  fair  accuracy  at  the  Pole,  and,  unlike 
all  other  observations,  it  was  not  based  on  the  impossible 
dreams  of  absolutely  accurate  time  or  sure  corrections 
for  refraction. 


HOW  THE  ALTITUDE  OF  THE  SUN  ABOVE  THE  HORIZON 
FIXES  THE  POSITION  OF  THE  NORTH  POLE 


6A.M. 

12°  91  30" 


OBSERVED  ALTITUDES,  APRIL  22.  1908 

NOON 
12°  14'  20" 


8P.M. 
12°  18'  40" 


The  exact  altitude  of  the  sun  at  noon  of  April  22,  1908,  on  the  pole,  was 
12°  9'  16",  but  owing  to  ice-drift — the  impossibility  of  accurate  time— and 
unknown  error  by  refraction,  no  such  pin-point  accuracy  can  be  recorded. 
At  each  hour  the  sun,  circling  about  the  horizon,  cast  a  shadow  of  uniform 
length. 


310  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

At  the  place  where  E-tuk-i-shook  and  I  camped, 
four  miles  south  of  where  I  had  left  Ah-we-lah  with  the 
dogs,  only  two  big  ice  hummocks  were  in  sight.  There 
were  more  spaces  of  open  water  than  at  our  first  camp. 
After  a. midnight  observation — of  April  22 — we  re- 
turned to  camp.  When  the  dogs  saw  us  approaching  in 
the  distance  they  rose,  and  a  chorus  of  howls  rang  over 
the  regions  of  the  Pole — regions  where  dogs  had  never 
howled  before.  All  the  scientific  work  being  finished, 
we  began  hastily  to  make  final  preparations  for 
departure. 

We  had  spent  two  days  about  the  North  Pole. 
After  the  first  thrills  of  victory,  the  glamor  wore  away 
as  we  rested  and  worked.  Although  I  tried  to  do  so,  1 
could  get  no  sensation  of  novelty  as  we  pitched  our  last 
belongings  on  the  sleds.  The  intoxication  of  success 
had  gone.  I  suppose  intense  emotions  are  invariably 
followed  by  reactions.  Hungry,  mentally  and  physic- 
ally exhausted,  a  sense  of  the  utter  uselessness  of  this 
thing,  of  the  empty  reward  of  my  endurance,  followed 
my  exhilaration.  I  had  grasped  my  ignus  fatuus.  It  is 
a  misfortune  for  any  man  when  his  ignus  fatuus  fails 
to  elude  him. 

During  those  last  hours  I  asked  myself  why  this 
place  had  so  aroused  an  enthusiasm  long-lasting  through 
self-sacrificing  years;  why,  for  so  many  centuries,  men 
had  sought  this  elusive  spot?  What  a  futile  thing,  I 
thought,  to  die  for!  How  tragically  useless  all  those 
heroic  efforts — efforts,  in  themselves,  a  travesty,  an 
ironic  satire,  on  much  vainglorious  human  aspiration  and 
endeavor !  I  thought  of  the  enthusiasm  of  the  people  who 
read  of  the  spectacular  efforts  of  men  to  reach  this 


AT  THE  NORTH  POLE  311 

vacant  silver-shining  goal  of  death.  I  thought,  too,  in 
that  hour,  of  the  many  men  of  science  who  were  devoting 
their  lives  to  the  study  of  germs,  the  making  of  toxins; 
to  the  saving  of  men  from  the  grip  of  disease — men  who- 
often  lost  their  own  lives  in  their  experiments;  whose 
world  and  work  existed  in  unpicturesque  laboratories, 
and  for  whom  the  laudations  of  people  never  rise.  It 
occurred  to  me — and  I  felt  the  bitterness  of  tears  in  my 
soul — that  it  is  often  the  showy  and  futile  deeds  of  men 
which  men  praise;  and  that,  after  all,  the  only  work 
worth  while,  the  only  value  of  a  human  being's  efforts, 
lie  in  deeds  whereby  humanity  benefits.  Such  work  as 
noble  bands  of  women  accomplish  who  go  into  the  slums 
of  great  cities,  who  nurse  the  sick,  who  teach  the  igno- 
rant, who  engage  in  social  service  humbly,  patiently,  un- 
expectant  of  any  reward !  Such  work  as  does  the  scien- 
tist who  studies  the  depredations  of  malignant  germs, 
who  straightens  the  body  of  the  crippled  child,  who  pre- 
cipitates a  toxin  which  cleanses  the  blood  of  a  frightful 
and  loathsome  disease ! 

As  my  eye  sought  the  silver  and  purple  desert  about 
me  for  some  stable  object  upon  which  to  fasten  itself,  I 
experienced  an  abject  abandon,  an  intolerable  loneliness. 
With  my  two  companions  I  could  not  converse;  in  my 
thoughts  and  emotions  they  could  not  share.  I  was 
alone.  I  was  victorious.  But  how  desolate,  how  dread- 
ful was  this  victory!  About  us  was  no  life,  no  spot  to 
relieve  the  monotony  of  frost.  We  were  the  only  pul- 
sating creatures  in  a  dead  world  of  ice. 

A  wild  eagerness  to  get  back  to  land  seized  me.  It 
seemed  as  though  some  new  terror  had  arisen  from  the 
icy  waters.  Something  huge,  something  baneful  .  .  . 


312  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

invisible  .  .  .  yet  whose  terror-inspiring,  burning 
eyes  I  felt  .  .  .  the  master  genii  of  the  goal,  per- 
haps .  .  .  some  vague,  terrible,  disembodied  spirit 
force,  condemned  for  some  unimaginable  sin  to  solitary 
prisonment  here  at  the  top  of  the  world,  and  who  wove 
its  malignant,  awful  spell,  and  had  lured  men  on  for  cen- 
turies to  their  destruction.  .  .  .  The  desolation  of 
the  place  was  such  that  it  was  almost  palpable ;  it  was  a 
thing  I  felt  I  must  touch  and  see.  My  companions 
felt,  the  heavy  load  of  it  upon  them,  and  from  the  few 
words  I  overheard  I  knew  they  were  eagerly  picturing 
to  themselves  the  simple  joys  of  existence  at  Etah  and 
Annoatok.  I  remember  that  to  me  came  pictures  of  my 
Long  Island  home.  All  this  arose,  naturally  enough, 
from  the  reaction  following  the  strain  of  striving  so  long 
and  so  fiercely  after  the  goal,  combined  with  the  sense  of 
the  great  and  actual  peril  of  our  situation.  But  what  a 
cheerless  spot  this  was,  to  have  aroused  the  ambition  of 
man  for  so  many  ages ! 

There  came  forcibly,  too,  the  thought  that  although 
the  Pole  was  discovered,  it  was  not  essentially  discov- 
ered, that  it  could'  be  discovered,  in  the  eyes  of  the 
world,  unless  we  could  return  to  civilization  and  teH 
what  we  had  done.  Should  we  be  lost  in  these  wastes  or 
should  we  be  frozen  to  death,  or  buried  in  the  snow,  or 
drowned  in  a  crevasse,  it  would  never  be  known  that  we 
had  been  here.  It  was,  therefore,  as  vitally  necessary  to 
get  back  in  touch  with  human  life,  with  our  report,  as  it 
had  been  to  get  to  the  Pole. 

Before  leaving,  I  enclosed  a  note,  written  on  the 
previous  day,  in  a  metallic  tube.  This  I  buried  in  the 
surface  of  the  Polar  snows.  I  knew,  of  course,  that  this 


AT  THE  NORTH  POLE 


313 


POLAR  ADVANCE  OF  THE  NATIONAL  STANDARDS 
Climax  of  four  centuries  of  Arctic  exploration — Stars  and  Stripes  at  the  Pole. 

would  not  remain  long  at  the  spot,  as  the  ice  was  in  the 
grip  of  a  slow-drifting  movement.  I  felt  the  possibility 
of  this  slow  movement  was  more  important  than  if  it 
remained  stationary;  for,  if  ever  found  in  the  south,  the 
destination  of  the  tube  would  indicate  the  ice  drift  from 
the  Pole.  The  following  is  an  exact  copy  of  the 
original  note,  which  is  reproduced  photographically  on 
another  page : 

COPY  OF  NOTE  IN  TUBE. 
April  21— at  the   North  Pole. 

Accompanied  by  the  Eskimo  boys  Ah-we-lah  and  E-tuk-i-shuk  I 
reached  at  noon  to-day  90°  N.  a  spot  on  the  polar  sea  520  miles  north  of 
Svartevoeg.  We  were  35  days  en  route.  Hope  to  return  to-morrow  on  a 
line  slightly  west  of  the  northward  track. 

New  land  was  discovered  along  the  102  M.  between  84  and  85.  The 
ice  proved  fairly  good,  with  few  open  leads,  hard  snow  and  little  pressure 
trouble.  We  are  in  good  health,  and  have  food  for  forty  days.  This,  with 
the  meat  of  the  dogs  to  be  sacrificed,  will  keep  us  alive  for  fifty  or  sixty 
days. 

This  note  is  deposited  with  a  small  American  flag  in  a  metallic  tube 
on  the  drifting  ice. 

Its  return  will  be  appreciated,  to  the  International  Bureau  of  Polar 
Research  at  the  Royal  Observatory,  Uccle,  Belgium. 

(Signed)       FREDERICK  A.  COOK. 


THE  RETURN— A  BATTLE  FOR  LIFE 
AGAINST  FAMINE  AND  FROST 

TURNED  BACKS  TO  THE  POLE  AND  TO  THE  SUN — THE  DOGS, 
SEEMINGLY  GLAD  AND  SEEMINGLY  SENSIBLE  THAT 
THEIR  NOSES  WERE  POINTED  HOMEWARD,  BARKED 

SHRILLY SUFFERING  FROM   INTENSE  DEPRESSION— 

THE  DANGERS  OF  MOVING  ICE,  OF  STORMS  AND  SLOW 

STARVATION THE  THOUGHT  OF  FIVE  HUNDRED  AND 

TWENTY  MILES  TO  LAND  CAUSES  DESPAIR 

XXI 

SOUTHWARD  OVER  THE  MID-POLAR  SEA 

With  few  glances  backward,  we  continued  the 
homeward  run  in  haste,  crossing  many  new  crevasses 
and  bound  on  a  course  along  the  one  hundredth  meri- 
dian. 

The  eagerness  to  solve  the  mystery  had  served  its 
purpose.  The  memory  of  the  adventure  for  a  time  re- 
mained as  a  reminder  of  reckless  daring.  As  we  now 
moved  along,  there  came  more  and  more  strongly  the 
realization  of  the  prospective  difficulties  of  the  return. 
Although  the  mercury  was  still  frozen  and  the  sun's 
perpetual  flush  was  lost  in  a  frigid  blue,  the  time  was 
at  hand  in  lower  latitudes  for  the  ice  to  break  and  drift 
southward. 


THE  RETURN  315 

With  correct  reasoning,  all  former  expeditions  had 
planned  to  return  to  land  and  a  secure  line  of  retreat 
by  May  1.  We  could  not  hope  to  do  this  until  early 
in  June.  It  seemed  probable,  therefore,  that  the  ice 
along  the  outskirts  of  the  Polar  sea  would  be  much  dis- 
rupted and  that  open  water,  small  ice  and  rapid  drifts 
would  seriously  interfere  with  our  return  to  a  sure  foot- 
ing on  the  shores  of  Fridtjof  Nansen  Sound.  This  and 
many  other  possible  dangers  had  been  carefully  con- 
sidered before,  but  the  conquest  of  the  Pole  was  not 
possible  without  such  risks. 

We  had  started  earlier  than  all  other  Polar  expedi- 
tions and  no  time  had  been  lost  en  route.  If  misfortune 
came  to  us,  it  could  not  be  because  of  wasted  energies 
or  unnecessary  delay.  In  the  last  days  of  the  onward 
rush  to  success  there  had  been  neither  time  nor  oppor- 
tunity to  ponder  over  future  dangers,  but  now,  facing 
the  southern  skies,  under  which  lay  home  and  all  for 
which  we  lived,  the  back  trail  seemed  indescribably  long. 
In  cold,  sober  thought,  freed  of  the  intoxication  of 
Polar  enthusiasm,  the  difficulties  increasingly  darkened 
in  color.  We  clearly  saw  that  the  crucial  stage  of  the 
campaign  was  not  the  taking  of  the  Pole.  The  test  of 
our  fitness  as  boreal  conquerors  was  to  be  measured  by 
the  outcome  of  a  final  battle  for  life  against  famine  and 
frost. 

Figuring  out  the  difficulties  and  possibilities  of 
our  return,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  to  endeavor 
to  get  back  by  our  upward  trail  would  not  afford  great 
advantage.  Much  time  would  be  lost  seeking  the  trail. 
The  almost  continuous  low  drift  of  snow  during  some 
part  of  nearly  every  day  would  obliterate  our  tracks 


316  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

and  render  the  trail  useless  as  a  beaten  track  in  making 
travel  easier.  The  advantage  of  previously  constructed 
snow  houses  as  camps  did  not  appeal  to  us. 

After  one  is  accustomed  to  a  new,  clean,  bright 
dome  of  snow  every  night,  as  we  were,  the  return  to  such 
a  camp  is  gloomy  and  depressing.  The  house  is  almost 
invariably  left  in  such  a  shape  that,  for  hygienic  reasons 
alone,  it  should  not  be  occupied.  Furthermore,  the  in- 
fluence of  sun  and  storm  absolutely  destroys  in  a  few 
days  two  out  of  three  of  all  such  shelter  places.  More- 
over, we  were  now  camping  in  our  silk  tent  and  did  not 
require  other  shelter.  At  the  season  of  the  year  in 
which  we  were  traveling,  the  activity  of  the  pack  farther 
south  made  back-tracking  impossible,  because  of  irregu- 
lar lateral  drift  of  individual  fields.  And  to  me  the 
most  important  reason  was  an  eager  desire  to  ascertain 
what  might  be  discovered  on  a  new  trail  farther  west. 
It  was  this  eagerness  which  led  to  our  being  carried 
adrift  and  held  prisoners  for  a  year. 

The  first  days,  however,  passed  rapidly.  The  ice 
fields  became  smoother.  On  April  24  we  crossed  five 
crevasses.  With  fair  weather  and  favorable  ice,  long 
marches  were  made.  On  the  24th  we  made  sixteen 
miles,  on  the  25th  fifteen  miles,  on  the  26th,  27th  and 
28th,  fourteen  miles  a  day.  The  fire  of  the  homing 
sentiment  began  to  dispel  our  overbearing  fatigue.  The 
dogs  sniffed  the  air.  The  Eskimos  sang  songs  of  the 
chase.  To  me  also  there  came  cheering  thoughts  of 
friends  and  loved  ones  to  be  greeted.  I  thought  of  de- 
lightful dinners,  of  soul-stirring  music.  For  all  of  us, 
the  good  speed  of  the  return  chase  brought  a  mental 
atmosphere  of  dreams  of  the  pleasures  of  another  world. 


THE  RETURN  317 

For  a  time  we  were  blinded  to  ultimate  dangers,  just  as 
we  had  been  in  the  northward  dash. 

In  our  return  along  the  one  hundredth  meridian, 
there  were  three  important  objects  to  be  gained  by  a 
route  somewhat  west  of  the  northward  march.  The  in- 
creasing easterly  drift  would  thus  be  counterbalanced. 
We  hoped  to  get  near  enough  to  the  new  lands  to  ex- 
plore a  part  of  the  coast.  And  a  wider  belt  would  be 
swept  out  of  the  unknown  area.  On  April  30  the  pedom- 
eter registered  one  hundred  and  twenty-one  miles,  and 
by  our  system  of  dead  reckoning,  which  was  usually  cor- 
rect, we  should  have  been  at  latitude  87°,  59',  longi- 
tude 100°.  The  nautical  observations  gave  latitude 
88°,  1',  longitude  97°,  42'.  We  were  drifting  eastward, 
therefore,  with  increasing  speed.  To  counterbalance 
our  being  moved  by  this  drift,  we  turned  and  bounded 
southward  in  a  more  westerly  course. 

The  never-changing  sameness  of  the  daily  routine 
was  again  felt.  The  novelty  of  success  and  the  passion 
of  the  run  for  the  goal  were  no  longer  operative.  The 
scenes  of  shivering  blue  wearied  the  eye,  and  there  was 
no  inspiration  in  the  moving  sea  of  ice  to  gladden  the 
heart.  The  thermometer  rose  and  fell  between  30  and 
40°  below  zero,  Fahrenheit,  with  a  ceaseless  wind.  The 
first  of  May  was  at  hand,  bringing  to  mind  the  blossoms 
and  smiles  of  a  kindly  world.  But  here  all  nature  was 
narrowed  to  lines  of  ice. 

May  1  came  with  increasing  color  in  the  sunbursts, 
but  without  cheer.  The  splendor  of  terrestrial  fire  was 
a  cheat.  Over  the  horizon,  mirages  displayed  celestial 
hysterics.  The  sun  circled  the  skies  in  lines  of  glory, 
but  its  heat  was  a  sham,  its  light  a  torment.  The  ice 


318  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

was  heavy  and  smooth.  On  May  2,  clouds  obscured 
the  sky,  fog  fell  heavily  over  the  ice,  we  struck  our 
course  with  difficulty  but  made  nineteen  miles.  On 
May  3  snow  fell,  but  the  end  of  the  march  brought 
clear  skies,  and,  with  them,  the  longing  for  my  land  of 
blossoming  cherry  and  apple  trees. 

With  weary  nerves,  and  with  compass  in  hand,  my 
lonely  march  ahead  of  the  sledges  continued  day  by 
day.  Progress  was  satisfactory.  We  had  passed  the 
eighty-ninth  and  eighty-eighth  parallels.  The  eighty- 
seventh  and  the  eighty-sixth  would  soon  be  under  foot, 
and  the  sight  of  the  new  lands  should  give  encourage- 
ment. These  hard-fought  times  were  days  long  to  be 
remembered.  The  lack  of  cerebral  stimulation  and  nu- 
trition left  no  cellular  resource  to  aid  the  memory  of 
those  fateful  hours  of  chill. 

The  long  strain  of  the  march  had  established  a 
brotherly  sympathy  amongst  the  trio  of  human  strug- 
glers.  The  dogs,  though  still  possessing  the  savage  fe- 
rocity of  the  wolf,  had  taken  us  into  their  community. 
We  now  moved  among  them  without  hearing  a  grunt 
of  discord,  and  their  sympathetic  eyes  followed  until  we 
were  made  comfortable  on  the  cheerless  snows.  If  they 
happened  to  be  placed  near  enough,  they  edged  up  and 
encircled  us,  giving  the  benefit  of  their  animal  heat.  To 
remind  us  of  their  presence,  frost-covered  noses  were 
frequently  pushed  under  the  sleeping  bag,  and  occa- 
sionally a  cold  snout  touched  our  warm  skin  with  a  rude 
awakening. 

We  loved  the  creatures,  and  admired  their  superb 
brute  strength.  Their  superhuman  adaptability  was 
a  frequent  topic  of  conversation.  With  a  pelt  that  was 


THE  RETURN  319 

a  guarantee  against  all  weather  condition,  they  threw 
themselves  down  to  the  sweep  of  winds,  in  open  defiance 
of  death-dealing  storms.  Eating  but  a  pound  of  pem- 
mican  a  day,  and  demanding  neither  water  nor  shelter, 
they  willingly  did  a  prodigious  amount  of  work  and 
then,  as  bed- fellows,  daily  offered  their  fur  as  shelter  and 
their  bones  as  head-rests  to  their  two-footed  companions. 
We  had  learned  to  appreciate  the  advantage  of  their 
beating  breasts.  The  bond  of  animal  fellowship  had 
drawn  tighter  and  tighter  in  a  long  run  of  successive 
adventures.  And  now  there  was  a  stronger  reason  than 
ever  to  appreciate  power,  for  together  we  were  seeking 
an  escape  from  a  world  which  was  never  intended  for 
creatures  with  pulsating  hearts. 

Much  very  heavy  ice  was  crossed  near  the  eighty- 
eighth  parallel,  but  the  endless  unbroken  fields  of  the 
northward  trails  were  not  again  seen.  Now  the  weather 
changed  considerably.  The  light,  cutting  winds  from 
the  west  increased  in  force,  and  the  spasmodic  squalls 
came  at  shorter  intervals.  The  clear  purples  and  blues 
of  the  skies  gradually  gave  place  to  an  ugly  hue  of  gray. 
A  rush  of  frosty  needles  came  over  the  pack  for  several 
hours  each  day. 

The  inducement  to  seek  shelter  in  cemented  walls 
of  snow  and  to  wait  for  better  weather  was  very  great. 
But  such  delay  would  mean  certain  starvation.  Under 
fair  conditions,  there  was  barely  food  enough  to  reach 
land,  and  even  short  delays  might  seriously  jeopardize 
our  return.  We  could  not,  therefore,  do  otherwise  than 
force  ourselves  against  the  wind  and  drift  with  all  pos- 
sible speed,  paying  no  heed  to  unavoidable  suffering. 
As  there  was  no  alternative,  we  tried  to  persuade  our- 


320  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

selves  that  existing  conditions  might  be  worse  than  they 
were. 

The  hard  work  of  igloo  building  was  now  a  thing 
of  the  past — only  one  had  been  built  since  leaving  the 
Pole,  and  in  this  a  precious  day  was  lost,  while  the  at- 
mospheric fury  changed  the  face  of  the  endless  expanse 
of  desolation.  The  little  silk  tent  protected  us  suffi- 
ciently from  the  icy  airs.  There  were  still  50°  of  frost, 
but,  with  hardened  skins  and  insensible  nerve  filaments, 
the  torture  was  not  so  keenly  felt.  Our  steady  diet  of 
pemmican,  tea  and  biscuits  was  not  entirely  satisfactory. 
We  longed  for  enough  to  give  a  real  filling  sense,  but 
the  daily  ration  had  to  be  slightly  reduced  rather  than 
increased.  The  change  in  life  from  winter  to  summer, 
which  should  take  place  at  about  this  time  of  the  year, 
was,  in  our  case,  marked  only  by  a  change  in  shelter, 
from  the  snow  house  to  the  tent,  and  our  beds  were 
moved  from  the  soft  snow  shelf  of  the  igloo  to  the  hard, 
wind-swept  crust. 

In  my  watches  to  get  a  peep  of  the  sun  at  just  the 
right  moment,  I  was  kept  awake  during  much  of  the 
resting  period.  For  pastime,  my  eyes  wandered  from 
snorting  dogs  to  snoring  men.  During  one  of  these 
idle  moments  there  came  a  solution  of  the  utility  of  the 
dog's  tail,  a  topic  with  which  I  had  been  at  play  for 
several  days.  It  is  quoted  here  at  the  risk  of  censure, 
because  it  is  a  typical  phase  of  our  lives  which  cannot 
be  illustrated  otherwise.  Seeming  trivialities  were  seized 
upon  as  food  for  thought.  Why,  I  asked,  has  the  dog  a 
tail  at  all?  The  bear,  the  musk  ox,  the  caribou  and  the 
hare,  each  in  its  own  way,  succeeds  very  well  with  but 
a  dwarfed  stub.  Why  does  nature,  in  the  dog,  expend 


THE  RETURN 

its  best  effort  in  growing  the  finest  fur  over  a  seemingly 
useless  line  of  tail  bones?  The  thing  is  distinctive,  and 
one  could  hardly  conceive  of  the  creature  without  the 
accessory,  but  nature  in  the  Arctic  does  not  often  waste 
energy  to  display  beauties  and  temperament.  This  tail 
must  have  an  important  use;  otherwise  it  would  soon 
fall  under  the  knife  of  frost  and  time.  Yes!  It  was 
imported  into  the  Arctic  by  the  wolf  progenitor  of  the 
dog  from  warmer  lands,  where  its  swing  served  a  useful 
purpose  in  fly  time.  A  nose  made  to  breathe  warm  air 
requires  some  protection  in  the  far  north  and  the  dog 
supplied  the  need  with  his  tail.  At  the  time  when  I 
made  this  discovery  a  cold  wind,  charged  with  cutting 
crystal,  was  brushing  the  pack.  Each  dog  had  his  back 
arched  to  the  wind  and  his  face  veiled  with  an  effective 
curl  of  his  tail.  Thus  each  was  comfortably  shielded 
from  icy  torment  by  an  appendage  adapted  to  that 
very  purpose. 

In  the  long  tread  over  snowy  wastes  new  lessons 
in  human  mechanism  aroused  attention.  At  first  the 
effort  to  find  a  workable  way  over  the  troublesome  pack 
surface  had  kept  mind  and  body  keyed  to  an  exciting 
pitch,  but  slowly  this  had  changed.  By  a  kind  of  uncon- 
scious intuition,  the  eye  now  found  easy  routes,  the 
lower  leg  mechanically  traveled  over  yards  and  miles 
and  degrees  without  even  consulting  the  brain,  while  the 
leg  trunk,  in  the  effort  to  conserve  energy,  was  left  in 
repose  at  periods  during  miles  of  travel,  thus  saving 
much  of  the  exertion  of  walking. 

The  muscles,  thus  schooled  to  worR  automatically, 
left  the  mind  free  to  work  and  play.  The  maddening 
monotone  of  our  routine,  together  with  the  expenditure 


383  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

of  every  available  strain  of  force,  had  left  the  head 
dizzy  with  emptiness.  Something  must  be  done  to  lift 
the  soul  out  of  the  boreal  bleach. 

The  power  of  the  mind  over  the  horse-power  of  the 
body  was  here  shown  at  its  best.  The  flesh  proved  loyal 
to  the  gray  matter  only  while  mental  entertainment  was 
encouraged.  Thus  aching  muscles  were  persuaded  to 
do  double  duty  without  sending  up  a  cry  of  tired  feeling. 
The  play  of  the  mind  with  topics  of  its  own  choosing 
is  an  advantage  worth  seeking  at  all  times.  But,  to  us, 
it  multiplied  vital  force  and  increased  greatly  the  daily 
advance.  Science,  art  and  poetry  were  the  heights  to 
which  the  wings  of  thought  soared.  Beginning  with  the 
diversion  of  making  curious  speculations  on  subjects 
such  as  that  of  the  use  of  the  dog's  tail  and  the  Arctic 
law  of  animal  coloring,  the  first  period  of  this  mental 
exercise  closed  with  my  staging  a  drama  of  the  comedies 
and  tragedies  of  the  Eskimos. 

In  the  effort  to  frame  sentiment  in  measured  lines, 
a  weird  list  of  topics  occupied  my  strained  fancy.  In 
more  agreeable  moods  I  always  found  pleasure  in  imag- 
ining a  picture  of  the  Polar  sunrise,  that  budding  period 
of  life  when  all  Nature  awakens  after  its  winter  sleep. 
It  was  not  difficult  to  start  E-tuk-i-shook  and  Ah-we- 
lah  on  similar  flights  of  fancy.  A  mere  suggestion 
would  keep  up  a  flow  of  agreeable  thought  for  several 
days. 

By  such  forced  mental  stimuli  the  centers  of  fatigue 
were  deluded  into  insensibility.  The  eighty-seventh 
parallel  was  crossed,  the  eighty-sixth  was  neared,  but 
there  came  a  time  when  both  mind  and  body  wearied  of 
the  whole  problem  of  forced  resolution. 


THE  RETURN  323 

On  May  6  we  were  stopped  at  six  in  the  morning  by 
the  approach  of  an  unusual  gale.  The  wind  had  been 
steady  and  strong  all  night,  but  we  did  not  heed  its 
threatening  increase  of  force  until  too  late.  It  came 
from  the  west,  as  usual,  driving  coarse  snow  with  needle 
points.  The  ice  about  was  old  and  hummocky,  offering 
a  difficult  line  of  march,  but  some  shelter.  In  the  strong- 
est blasts  we  threw  ourselves  over  the  sled  behind  hum- 
mocks and  gathered  new  breath  to  force  a  few  miles 
more. 

Finally,  when  no  longer  able  to  force  the  dogs 
through  the  blinding  drift  we  sought  the  lee  of  an  un- 
lifted  block  of  ice.  Here  suitable  snow  was  found  for  a 
snow  house.  A  few  blocks  were  cut  and  set,  but  the  wind 
swept  them  away  as  if  they  were  chips.  The  tent  was 
tried,  but  it  could  not  be  made  to  stand  in  the  rush  of 
the  roaring  tumult.  In  sheer  despair  we  crept  into  the 
tent  without  erecting  the  pole.  Creeping  into  bags,  we 
then  allowed  the  flapping  silk  to  be  buried  by  the  drift- 
ing snow.  Soon  the  noise  and  discomfort  of  the  storm 
were  lost  and  we  enjoyed  the  comfort  of  an  icy  grave. 
An  efficient  breathing  hole  was  kept  open,  and  the  wind 
was  strong  enough  to  sweep  off  the  weight  of  a  danger- 
ous drift.  A  new  lesson  was  thus  learned  in  fighting 
the  battle  of  life,  and  it  was  afterwards  useful. 

Several  days  of  icy  despair  now  followed  one  an- 
other in  rapid  succession.  The  wind  did  not  rise  to  the 
full  force  of  a  storm,  but  it  was  too  strong  and  too  cold 
to  travel.  The  food  supply  was  noticeably  decreasing. 
The  daily  advance  was  less.  With  such  weather,  starva- 
tion seemed  inevitable.  Camp  was  moved  nearly  every 
day,  but  ambition  sank  to  the  lowest  ebb.  To  the  atmos- 


324  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

pheric  unrest  was  added  the  instability  of  broken  ice 
and  the  depressing  mystery  of  an  unknown  position. 
For  many  days  no  observations  had  been  possible.  Our 
location  could  only  be  guessed  at. 

Through  driving  storms,  with  the  wind  wailing  in 
our  ears  and  deafening  us  to  the  dismal  howling  of  the 
hungry  dogs,  we  pushed  forward  in  a  daily  maddening 
struggle.  The  route  before  us  was  unknown.  We  were 
in  the  fateful  clutch  of  a  drifting  sea  of  ice.  I  could  not 
guess  whither  we  were  bound.  At  times  I  even  lost  hope 
of  reaching  land.  Our  bodies  were  tired.  Our  legs 
were  numb.  We  were  almost  insensible  to  the  mad 
craving  hunger  of  our  stomachs.  We  were  living  on  a 
half  ration  of  food,  and  daily  becoming  weaker.* 

Sometimes  I  paused,  overcome  by  an  almost  over- 
whelming impulse  to  lie  down  and  drift  through  sleep 
into  death.  At  these  times,  fortunately,  thoughts  of 
home  came  thronging,  with  memories  as  tender  as  are 
the  memories  of  singing  spring-time  birds  in  winter 


*The  Fall  of  Body  Temperature — The  temperature  of  the  body  was  fre- 
quently taken.  Owing  to  the  breathing  of  very  cold  air,  the  thermometer  placed 
in  the  mouth  gave  unreliable  results,  but  by  placing  the  bulb  in  the  armpits,  when 
in  the  sleeping  bag,  fairly  accurate  records  were  kept.  These  proved  that  extreme 
cold  had  little  influence  on  bodily  heat;  but  when  long-continued  overwork  was 
combined  with  insufficient  food,  the  temperature  gradually  came  down.  On 
the  route  to  the  Pole  the  bodily  temperature  ranged  from  97°  5'  to  98°  4'.  In 
returning,  the  subnormal  temperature  fell  still  lower.  When  the  worry  of  being 
carried  adrift  and  the  danger  of  never  being  able  to  return  became  evident,  then 
the  mental  anguish,  combined  as  it  was  with  prolonged  overwork,  continued 
thirst  and  food  insufficiency,  was  strikingly  noted  by  our  clinical  thermometer. 
During  the  last  few  weeks,  before  reaching  land  at  Greenland  in  1909,  the  sub- 
normal temperature  sank  to  the  remarkable  minimum  of  96°  2'  F.  The  Eskimos 
usually  remained  about  half  a  degree  warmer.  The  respiration  and  heart  action 
was  at  this  time  fast  and  irregular. 

In  the  summer  period  of  famine  about  Jones  Sound  the  temperature  was 
normal.  At  that  time  we  had  an  abundance  of  water  and  an  interesting  occupa- 
tion in  quest  of  game,  but  we  often  felt  the  cold  more  severely  than  in  the  coldest 
season  of  winter. 


THE  RETURN  325 

time.  And,  although  the  stimulating  incentive  of  reach- 
ing the  Pole  on  going  north  was  gone,  now,  having 
accomplished  the  feat,  there  was  always  the  thought  that 
unless  I  got  home  no  one  should  ever  learn  of  that  super- 
human struggle,  that  final  victory. 

Empty  though  it  was,  I  had,  as  I  had  hoped,  proved 
myself  to  myself;  I  had  justified  the  three  centuries  of 
human  effort :  I  had  proven  that  finite  human  brain  and 
palpitating  muscle  can  be  victorious  over  a  cruel  and 
death-dealing  Nature.  It  was  a  testimony  that  it  was 
my  duty  to  give  the  world  of  struggling,  striving  men, 
and  which,  as  a  father,  I  hoped  with  pride  to  give  to  iny 
little  children. 


PTARMIGAN 


BACK  TO  LIFE  AND  BACK  TO  LAND 

THE  RETURN — DELUDED  BY  DRIFT  AND  FOG — CARRIED 
ASTRAY  OVER  AN  UNSEEN  DEEP — TRAVEL  FOR 
TWENTY  DAYS  IN  A  WORLD  OF  MISTS,  WITH  THE 

TERROR     OF     DEATH AWAKENED     FROM     SLEEP     BY 

A    HEAVENLY    SONG THE    FIRST    BIRD FOLLOWING 

THE     WINGED     HARBINGER WE     REACH     LAND — A 

BLEAK,  BARREN  ISLAND  POSSESSING  THE  CHARM  OF 
PARADISE — AFTER  DAYS  VERGING  ON  STARVATION,  WE 
ENJOY  A  FEAST  OF  UNCOOKED  GAME 

XXII 

SOUTHWARD  INTO  THE  AMERICAN  ARCHIPELAGO 

On  May  24  the  sky  cleared  long  enough  to  permit 
me  to  take  a  set  of  observations.  I  found  we  were  on 
the  eighty-fourth  parallel,  near  the  ninety-seventh 
meridian.  The  new  land  I  had  noted  on  my  northward 
journey  was  hidden  by  a  low  mist.  The  ice  was  much 
crevassed,  and  drifted  eastward.  Many  open  spaces 
of  water  were  denoted  in  the  west  by  patches  of  water 
sky.  The  pack  was  sufficiently  active  to  give  us  con- 
siderable anxiety,  although  pressure  lines  and  open 
water  did  not  at  the  time  seriously  impede  our  progress. 

Scarcely  enough  food  remained  on  the  sledges  to 


BACK  TO  LIFE  AND  BACK. TO  LAND    327 

reach  our  caches  unless  we  should  average  fifteen  miles 
a  day.  On  the  return  from  the  Pole  to  this  point  we  had 
been  able  to  make  only  twelve  miles  daily.  Now  our 
strength,  even  under  fair  conditions,  did  not  seem  to  be 
equal  to  more  than  ten  miles.  The  outlook  was  threat- 
ening, and  even  dangerous,  but  the  sight  of  the  cleared 
sky  gave  new  courage  to  E-tuk-i-shook  and  Ah-we-lah. 

Our  best  course  was  to  get  to  Fridtjof  Nansen 
Sound  as  soon  as  possible.  The  new  land  westward  was 
invisible,  and  offered  no  food  prospects.  An  attempted 
exploration  might  cause  a  fatal  delay. 

Still  depending  upon  a  steady  easterly  drift  of  the 
pack,  a  course  was  set  somewhat  west  of  Svartevoeg,  the 
northern  point  of  Axel  Heiberg  Land.  In  pressing  on- 
ward, light  variable  winds  and  thick  fogs  prevailed. 
The  ice  changed  rapidly  to  smaller  fields  as  we  advanced. 
The  temperature  rose  to  zero,  and  the  air  really  began 
to  be  warm.  Our  chronic  shivering  disappeared.  With 
light  sledges  and  endurable  weather,  we  made  fair  prog- 
ress over  the  increasing  pack  irregularities. 

As  we  crossed  the  eighty-third  parallel  we  found 
ourselves  to  the  west  of  a  large  lead,  extending  slightly 
west  of  south.  Immense  quantities  of  broken  and  pul- 
verized ice  lined  the  shores  to  a  width  of  several  miles. 
The  irregularities  of  this  surface  and  the  uncemented 
break  offered  difficulties  over  which  no  force  of  man  or 
beast  could  move  a  sledge  or  boat.  Compelled  to  fol- 
low the  line  of  least  resistance,  a  southerly  course  was  set 
along  the  ice  division.  The  wind  now  changed  and  came 
from  the  east,  but  there  was  no  relief  from  the  heavy 
banks  of  fog  that  surrounded  us. 

The  following  days  were  days  of  desperation.    The 


328  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

food  for  man  and  dog  was  reduced,  and  the  difficulties 
of  ice  travel  increased  dishearteningly.  We  traveled 
twenty  days,  not  knowing  our  position.  A  gray  mystery 
enshrouded  us.  Terror  followed  in  our  wake.  Beneath 
us  the  sea  moved — whither  it  was  carrying  us  I  did  not 
know.  That  we  were  ourselves  journeying  toward  an 
illimitable,  hopeless  sea,  where  we  should  die  of  slow, 
lingering  starvation,  I  knew  was  a  dreadful  probability. 
Every  minute  drew  its  pangs  of  despair  and  fear. 

The  gray  world  of  mist  was  silent.  My  compan- 
ions gazed  at  me  with  faces  shriveled,  thinned  and  hard- 
ened as  those  of  mummies.  Their  anguish  was  unspeak- 
able. My  own  vocal  powers  seemed  to  have  left  me. 
Our  dogs  were  still;  with  bowed  heads,  tails  drooping, 
they  pulled  the  sledges  dispiritedly.  We  seemed  like 
souls  in  torment,  traveling  in  a  world  of  the  dead,  con- 
demned to  some  Dantesque  torture  that  should  never 
cease. 

After  the  mental  torment  of  threatened  starvation, 
which  prevented,  despite  the  awful  languor  of  my  tor- 
tured limbs,  any  sleep;  after  heart-breaking  marches 
and  bitter  hunger  and  unquenched  thirst,  the  baffling 
mist  that  had  shut  us  from  all  knowledge  at  last  cleared 
away  one  morning.  Our  hearts  bounded.  I  felt  such 
relief  as  a  man  buried  alive  must  feel  when,  after  strug- 
gling in  the  stifling  darkness,  his  grave  is  suddenly 
opened.  Land  loomed  to  the  west  and  south  of  us. 

Yet  we  found  we  had  been  hardly  dealt  with  by 
fate.  Since  leaving  the  eighty-fourth  parallel,  without 
noticeable  movement,  we  had  been  carried  astray  by  the 
ocean  drift.  We  had  moved  with  the  entire  mass  that 
covered  the  Polar  waters.  I  took  observations.  They 


BACK  TO  LIFE  AND  BACK  TO  LAND         329 

gave  latitude  79°  32',  and  longitude  101°  22'.  At  last 
I  had  discovered  our  whereabouts,  and  found  that  we 
were  far  from  where  we  ought  to  be.  But  our  situation 
was  indeed  nearly  hopeless.  The  mere  gaining  a  knowl- 
edge of  where  we  actually  were,  however,  fanned  again 
the  inextinguishable  embers  of  hope. 

We  were  in  Crown  Prince  Gustav  Sea.  To  the 
east  were  the  low  mountains  and  high  valleys  of  Axel 
Heiberg  Land,  along  the  farther  side  of  which  was  our 
prearranged  line  of  retreat,  with  liberal  caches  of  good 
things  and  with  big  game  everywhere.  But  we  were 
effectually  barred  from  all  this. 

Between  us  and  the  land  lay  fifty  miles  of  small 
crushed  ice  and  impassable  lines  of  open  water.  In  hard- 
fought  efforts  to  cross  these  we  were  repulsed  many 
times.  I  knew  that  if  by  chance  we  should  succeed  in 
crossing,  there  would  still  remain  an  unknown  course  of 
eighty  miles  to  the  nearest  cache,  on  the  eastern  coast  of 
Axel  Heiberg  Land. 

We  had  no  good  reason  to  expect  any  kind  of  sub- 
sistence along  the  west  coast  of  Axel  Heiberg  Land. 
We  had  been  on  three-fourths  rations  for  three  weeks, 
and  there  remained  only  half  rations  for  another  ten 
days.  Entirely  aside  from  the  natural  barriers  in  the 
way  of  returning  eastward  and  northward,  we  were  now 
utterly  unequal  to  the  task,  for  we  had  not  the  food  to 
support  us. 

The  land  to  the  south  was  nearer.  Due  south  there 
was  a  wide  gap  which  we  took  to  be  Hassel  Sound.  On 
each  side  there  was  a  low  ice-sheeted  island,  beyond  the 
larger  islands  which  Sverdrup  had  named  Ellef  Ringnes 
Land  and  Amund  Ringnes  Land.  The  ice  southward 


330  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

was. tolerably  good  and  the  drift  was  south-south-east. 

In  the  hope  that  some  young  seals  might  be  seen 
we  moved  into  Hassel  Sound  toward  the  eastern  island. 
To  satisfy  our  immediate  pangs  of  hunger  was  our  most 
important  mission. 

The  march  on  June  14  was  easy,  with  a  bright 
warm  sun  and  a  temperature  but  little  under  the  freez- 
ing point.  In  a  known  position,  on  good  ice,  and  with 
land  rising  before  us,  we  were  for  a  brief  period  happy 
and  strong,  even  with  empty  stomachs.  The  horizon  was 
eagerly  sought  for  some  color  or  form  or  movement  to 
indicate  life.  We  were  far  enough  south  to  expect  bears 
and  seals,  and  expecting  the  usual  luck  of  the  hungry 
savage,  we  sought  diligently.  Our  souls  reached  forth 
through  our  far-searching  eyes.  Our  eyes  pained  with 
the  intense  fixity  of  gazing,  yet  no  animate  thing  ap- 
peared. The  world  was  vacant  and  dead.  Our  beating 
hearts,  indeed,  seemed  to  be  the  only  palpitating  things 
there. 

In  the  piercing  rays  of  a  high  sun  the  tent  was 
erected,  and  in  it,  after  eating  only  four  ounces  of  pem- 
mican  and  drinking  two  cups  of  icy  water,  we  sought 
rest.  The  dogs,  after  a  similar  ration,  but  without 
water,  fell  into  an  easy  sleep.  I  regarded  the  poor  crea- 
tures with  tenderness  and  pity.  For  more  than  a  fort- 
night they  had  not  uttered  a  sound  to  disturb  the  frigid 
silence.  When  a  sled  dog  is  silent  and  refuses  to  fight 
with  his  neighbor,  his  spirit  is  very  low.  Finally  I  fell 
asleep. 

At  about  six  o'clock  we  were  awakened  by  a  strange 
sound.  Our  surprised  eyes  turned  from  side  to  side. 
Not  a  word  was  uttered.  Another  sound  came — a  series 


BACK  TO  LIFE  AND  BACK  TO  LAND         331 


of  soft,  silvery  notes — the  song  of  a  creature  that  might 
have  come  from  heaven.  I  listened  with  rapture.  I 
believed  I  was  dreaming.  The  enchanting  song  con- 
tinued— I  lay  entranced.  I  could  not  believe  this  divine 
thing  was  of  our  real  world  until  the  pole  of  our  tent 
gently  quivered.  Then,  above  us,  I  heard  the  flutter 
of  wings.  It  was  a  bird — a  snow  bunting  trilling  its 
ethereal  song — the  first  sound  of  life  heard  for  many 
months. 

We  were  back  to  life!  Tears  of  joy  rolled  down 
our  emaciated  faces.  If  I  could  tell  you  of  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  soul  which  came  with  that  first  bird  note,  and 
the  new  interest  which  it  gave  in  our  subsequent  life,  I 
should  feel  myself  capable  of  something  superhuman  in 
powers  of  expression. 

With  the  song  of  that  marvelous  bird  a  choking 
sense  of  homesickness  came  to  all  of  us.  We  spoke  n@ 
word.  The  longing  for  home  gripped  our  hearts. 

We  were  hungry,  but  no  thought  of  killing  this 
little  feathered  creature  came  to  us.  It  seemed  as 
divine  as  the  bird  that  came  of  old  to  Noah  in  the  ark. 
Taking  a  few  of  our  last  bread  crumbs,  we  went  out  to 
give  it  food.  The  little  chirping  thing  danced  joyously 
on  the  crisp  snows,  evidently  as  glad  to  see  us  as  we 
were  to  behold  it.  I  watched  it  with  fascination.  At 
last  we  were  back  to  life !  We  felt  renewed  vigor.  And 
when  the  little  bird  finally  rose  into  the  air  and  flew 
homeward,  our  spirits  rose,  our  eyes  followed  it,  and,  as 
though  it  were  a  token  sent  to  us,  we  followed  its  winged 
course  landward  with  eager,  bounding  hearts. 

We  were  now  on  immovable  ice  attached  to  the 
land.  We  directed  our  course  uninterruptedly  land- 


332  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

ward,  for  there  was  no  thought  of  further  rest  or  sleep 
after  the  visit  of  the  bird  had  so  uplifted  our  hearts.  Our 
chances  of  getting  meat  would  have  been  bettered  by 
following  close  to  the  open  water,  but  the  ice  there  was 
such  that  no  progress  could  be  made.  Furthermore,  the 
temptation  quickly  to  set  foot  on  land  was  too  great  to 
resist.  At  the  end  of  a  hard  march — the  last  few  hours 
of  which  were  through  deep  snows — we  mounted  the  ice 
edge,  and  finally  reached  a  little  island — a  bare  spot  of 
real  land.  When  my  foot  touched  it,  my  heart  sank. 
We  sat  down,  and  the  joy  of  the  child  in  digging  the 
sand  of  the  seashore  was  ours. 

I  wonder  if  ever  such  a  bleak  spot,  in  a  desert  of 
death,  had  so  impressed  men  before  as  a  perfect  para- 
dise. In  this  barren  heap  of  sand  and  clay,  we  were  at 
last  free  of  the  danger,  the  desolation,  the  sterility  of  that 
soul-withering  environment  of  a  monotonously  moving 
world  of  ice  and  eternal  frost. 

We  fastened  the  dogs  to  a  rock,  and  pitched  the  tent 
on  earth-soiled  snows.  In  my  joy  I  did  not  forget  that 
the  Pole  was  ours,  but,  at  that  time,  I  was  ready  to  offer 
freely  to  others  the  future  pleasures  of  its  crystal  en- 
vironment and  all  its  glory.  Our  cup  had  been  filled  too 
often  with  its  bitters  and  too  seldom  with  its  sweets  for 
us  to  entertain  further  thirst  for  boreal  conquest. 

And  we  also  resolved  to  keep  henceforth  from  the 
wastes  of  the  terrible  Polar  sea.  In  the  future  the  posi- 
tion of  lands  must  govern  our  movements.  For,  along 
a  line  of  rocks,  although  we  might  suffer  from  hunger, 
we  should  no  longer  be  helpless  chips  on  the  ocean  drift, 
and  if  no  other  life  should  be  seen,  at  least  occasional 
shrimps  would  gladden  the  heart. 


RKCOIiD    LEFT    IN    BRASS    TUBE    AT    NORTH 


BACK  TO  LIFE  AND  BACK  TO  LAND         333 

We  stepped  about  on  the  solid  ground  with  a  new 
sense  of  security.  But  the  land  about  was  low,  barren, 
and  shapeless.  Its  formation  was  triassic,  similar  to  that 
of  most  of  Heiberg  land,  but  in  our  immediate  surround- 
ings, erosion  by  frost,  the  grind  of  ice  sheets,  and  the 
power  of  winds,  had  leveled  projecting  rqcks  and 
cliffs.  Part  .of  its  interior  was  blanketed  with  ice. 
Its  shore  line  had  neither  the  relief  of  a  colored 
cliff  nor  a  picturesque  headland;  there  was  not  even  a 
wall  of  ice ;  there  were  only  dull,  uninteresting  slopes  of 
sand  and  snow  separating  the  frozen  sea  from  the  land- 
ice.  The  most  careful  scrutiny  gave  no  indication  of  a 
living  creature.  The  rocks  were  uncovered  even  with 
black  lichens.  A  less  inviting  spot  of  earth  could  not  be 
conceived,  yet  it  aroused  in  us  a  deep  sense  of  en- 
thusiasm. A  strip  of  tropical  splendor  could  not  have 
done  more.  The  spring  of  man's  passion  is  sprung  by 
contrast,  not  by  degrees  of  glory. 

In  camp,  the  joy  of  coming  back  to  earth  was 
chilled  by  the  agonizing  call  of  the  stomach.  The 
effervescent  happiness  could  not  dispel  the  pangs  of 
hunger.  A  disabled  dog  which  had  been  unsuccessfully 
nursed  for  several  days  was  sacrificed  on  the  altar  of 
hard  luck,  and  the  other  dogs  were  thereupon  given  a 
liberal  feed,  in  which  we  shared.  To  our  palates  the 
flesh  of  the  dog  was  not  distasteful,  yet  the  dog  had 
been  our  companion  for  many  months,  and  at  the  same 
time  that  our  conscienceless  stomachs  were  calling  for 
more  hot,  blood-wet  meat,  a  shivering  sense  of  guilt  came 
over  me.  We  had  killed  and  were  eating  a  living  crea- 
ture which  had  been  faithful  to  us. 

We  were  hard-looking  men  at  this  time.    Our  fur 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

garments  were  worn  through  at  the  elbows  and  at  the 
knees.  Ragged  edges  dangled  in  the  winds.  All  the 
boot  soles  were  mere  films,  like  paper  with  many  holes. 
Our  stockings  were  in  tatters.  The  bird-skin  shirts  had 
been  fed  to  the  dogs,  and  strips  of  our  sleeping  bags 
had  day  by  day  been  added  to  the  canine  mess.  It  took 
all  our  spare  time  now  to  mend  clothing.  Dressed  in 
rags,  with  ugly  brown  faces,  seamed  with  many  deep 
wind-fissures,  we  had  reached,  in  our  appearance,  the 
extreme  limit  of  degradation. 

At  the  Pole  I  had  been  thin,  but  now  my  skin  was 
contracted  over  bones  offering  only  angular  eminences 
as  a  bodily  outline.  The  Eskimos  were  as  thin  as  my- 
self. My  face  was  as  black  as  theirs.  They  had  risen 
to  higher  mental  levels,  and  I  had  descended  to  lower 
animal  depths.  The  long  strain,  the  hard  experiences, 
had  made  us  equals.  We  were,  however,  still  in  good 
health  and  were  capable  of  considerable  hard  work.  It 
was  not  alone  the  want  of  food  which  had  shriveled  our 
bodies,  for  greater  pangs  of  hunger  were  reserved  for  a 
later  run  of  misfortune.  Up  to  this  point  persistent 
overwork  had  been  the  most  potent  factor. 

As  we  passed  out  of  Hassel  Sound,  the  ice  drifted 
southward.  Many  new  fractures  were  noted,  and  open 
spaces  of  water  appeared.  Here  was  seen  the  track  of 
a  rat — the  first  sign  of  a  four-footed  creature — and  we 
stopped  to  examine  the  tiny  marks  with  great  interest. 
Next,  some  old  bear  tracks  were  detected.  These  simple 
tilings  had  an  intense  fascination  for  us,  coming  as  we 
did  out  of  a  lifeless  world;  and,  too,  these  signs  showed 
that  the  possibilities  of  food  were  at  hand,  and  the 
thought  sharpened  our  senses  into  savage  fierceness. 


BACK  TO  LIFE  AND  BACK  TO  LAND         335 

We  continued  our  course  southward,  as  we  fol- 
lowed, wolf -like,  in  the  bear  footprints.  The  sledges 
bounded  over  the  icy  irregularities  as  they  had  not  done 
for  months.  Every  crack  in  the  ice  was  searched  for 
seals,  and  with  the  glasses  we  mounted  hummock  after 
hummock  to  search  the  horizon  for  bears. 

We  were  not  more  than  ten  miles  beyond  land 
when  Ah-we-lah  located  an  auspicious  spot  to  leeward. 
After  a  peep  through  the  glasses  he  shouted.  The  dogs 
understood.  They  raised  their  ears,  and  jumped  to  the 
full  length  of  their  traces.  We  hurried  eastward  to  de- 
prive the  bear  of  our  scent,  but  we  soon  learned  that  he 
was  as  hungry  as  we  were,  for  he  made  an  air  line  for  our 
changed  position.  We  were  hunting  the  bear — the 
bear  was  also  hunting  us. 

Getting  behind  a  hummock,  we  awaited  develop1- 
ments.  Bruin  persistently  neared,  rising  on  his 
haunches  frequently  so  as  the  better  to  see  E-tuk-i- 
shook,  who  had  arranged  himself  like  a  seal  as  a  decoy. 
When  within  a  few  hundred  yards  the  dogs  were  freed. 
They  had  been  waiting  like  entrenched  soldiers  for  a 
chance  to  advance.  In  a  few  moments  the  gaunt  crea- 
tures encircled  the  puzzled  bear.  Almost  without  a 
sound,  they  leaped  at  the  great  animal  and  sank  their 
fangs  into  his  hind  legs.  Ah-we-lah  fired.  The  bear 
fell. 

Camp  technique  and  the  advantages  of  a  fire  were 
not  considered — the  meat  was  swallowed  raw,  with 
wolfish  haste,  and  no  cut  of  carefully  roasted  bullock 
ever  tasted  better.  It  was  to  such  grim  hunger  that  we 
had  come. 

Then  we  slept,  and  after  a  long  time  our  eyes  re- 


336  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

opened  upon  a  world  colored  with  new  hope.  The  im- 
mediate threat  of  famine  was  removed,  and  a  day  was 
given  over  to  filling  up  with  food.  Even  after  that,  a 
liberal  supply  of  fresh  meat  rested  on  the  sledge  for 
successive  days  of  feasting.  In  the  days  which  followed, 
other  bears,  intent  on  examining  our  larder,  came  near 
enough  at  times  to  enable  us  to  keep  up  a  liberal  supply 
of  fresh  meat. 

With  the  assurance  of  a  food  supply,  a  course  was 
set  to  enter  Wellington  Channel  and  push  along  to 
Lancaster  Sound,  where  I  hoped  a  Scottish  whaler  could 
be  reached  in  July  or  August.  In  this  way  it  seemed 
possible  to  reach  home  shores  during  the  current  year. 
If  we  should  try  to  reach  Annoatok  I  realized  we  should 
in  all  probability  be  compelled  to  winter  at  Cape  Sabine. 
The  ice  to  the  eastward  in  Norwegian  Bay  offered  dif- 
ficulties like  those  of  Crown  Prince  Gustav  Sea,  and 
altogether  the  easterly  return  to  our  base  did  not  at  this 
time  seem  encouraging.  The  air-line  distance  to  Smith 
Sound  and  that  to  Lancaster  Sound  were  about  the 
same,  with  the  tremendous  advantage  of  a  straight 
course — a  direct  drift — and  fairly  smooth  ice  to  the 
southward. 

This  conclusion  to  push  forward  for  Lancaster 
Sound  was  reached  on  June  19.  We  were  to  the  west 
of  North  Cornwall  Island,  but  a  persistent  local  fog 
gave  only  an  occasional  view  of  its  icy  upper  slopes.  The 
west  was  clear,  and  King  Christian  Land  appeared  as 
a  low  line  of  blue.  About  us  the  ice  was  small  but  free 
of  pressure  troubles.  Bear  tracks  were  frequently  seen  as 
we  went  along.  The  sea  was  bright.  The  air  was  delight- 
fully warm,  with  the  thermometer  at  10°  above  zero. 


BACK  TO  LIFE  AND  BACK  TO  LAND         337 

At  every  stop,  the  panting  dogs  tumbled  and  rolled 
playfully  on  the  snows,  and  pushed  their  heated  muzzles 
deep  into  the  white  chill.  If  given  time  they  would 
quickly  arrange  a  comfortable  bed  and  stretch  out,  seem- 
ingly lifeless,  for  a  refreshing  slumber.  At  the  awak- 
ening call  of  the  lash,  all  were  ready  with  a  quick  jump 
and  a  daring  snarl,  but  the  need  of  a  tight  trace  re- 
moved their  newly-acquired  fighting  propensity.  They 
had  gained  strength  and  spirit  with  remarkable  rapidity. 
Only  two  days  before,  they  stumbled  along  with  irregu- 
lar step,  slack  traces,  and  lowered  tails,  but  the  fill  of 
juicy  bear's  meat  raised  their  bushy  appendages  to  a 
coil  of  pride — an  advantage  which  counted  for  several 
miles  in  a  day's  travel. 

The  drift  carried  us  into  Penny  Strait,  midway  be- 
tween Bathurst  Land  and  Grinnell  Peninsula.  The 
small  islands  along  both  shores  tore  up  the  ice  and  piled 
it  in  huge  uplifts.  There  was  a  tremendous  pressure  as 
the  floes  "were  forced  through  narrow  gorges.  Only  a 
middle  course  was  possible  for  us,  with  but  a  few  miles' 
travel  to  our  credit  for  each  day.  But  the  southerly 
movement  of  the  groaning  ice  was  rapid.  A  persistent 
fog  veiled  the  main  coast  on  both  sides,  but  off -lying 
islands  were  seen  and  recognized  often  enough  to  note 
the  positions.  At  Dundas  Island  the  drift  was  stopped, 
and  we  sought  the  shores  of  Grinnell  Peninsula.  Ad- 
vancing eastward,  close  to  land,  the  ice  proved  extremely 
difficult.  The  weather,  however,  was  delightful.  Be- 
tween snowdrifts,  purple  and  violet  flowers  rose  over 
warm  beds  of  newly  invigorated  mosses — the  first 
flowers  that  we  had  seen  for  a  long  and  weary  time,  and 
the  sight  of  them,  with  their  blossoms  and  color,  deeply 


338  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

thrilled  me.  From  misty  heights  came  the  howl  of  the 
white  wolf.  Everywhere  were  seen  the  traces  of  the  fox 
and  the  lemming.  The  eider-duck  and  the  ivory  gull 
had  entered  our  horizon. 

All  nature  smiled  with  the  cheer  of  midsummer. 
Here  was  an  inspiring  fairyland  for  which  our  hearts 
had  long  yearned.  In  it  there  was  music  which  the 
long  stiffened  tympanums  were  slow  in  catching.  The 
land  was  an  oasis  of  hardy  verdure.  The  sea  was  a 
shifting  scene  of  frost  and  blue  glitter.  With  the  soul 
freed  from  its  icy  fetters,  the  soft,  sunny  airs  came  in 
bounds  of  gladness.  In  dreamy  stillness  we  sought  the 
bosom  of  the  frozen  sea,  and  there  heard  the  groan  of 
the  pack  which  told  of  home  shores.  Drops  of  water 
from  melting  snows  put  an  end  to  thrist  tortures.  The 
blow  of  the  whales  and  the  seals  promised  a  luxury  of 
fire  and  fuel,  while  the  low  notes  of  the  ducks  prepared 
the  palate  for  dessert. 

As  we  neared  a  little  moss-covered  island  in  drift- 
ing southward,  we  saw  the  interesting  chick  footprints 
of  ptarmigan  in  the  snow.  The  dogs  pointed  their  ears 
and  raised  their  noses,  and  we  searched  the  clearing  skies 
with  eye  and  ear  for  the  sudden  swoop  of  the  boreal 
chicken.  I  had  developed  a  taste  for  this  delicate  fowl 
as  desperate  as  that  of  the  darky  for  chicken,  and 
my  conscience  was  sufficiently  deadened  by  cold  and 
hunger  to  break  into  a  roost  by  night  or  day  to  steal 
anything  that  offered  feathery  delights  for  the  palate. 

I  was  courting  gastric  desire,  but  the  ptarmigan 
was  engaged  in  another  kind  of  courtship.  Two  singing 
capons  were  cooing  notes  of  love  to  a  shy  chick,  and  they 
suddenly  decided  that  there  was  not  room  for  two, 


BACK  TO  LIFE  AND  BACK  TO  LAND         339 

whereupon  a  battle  ensued  with  a  storm  of  wings  and 
much  darting  of  bills.  In  this  excitement  they  got  into 
an  ice  crevasse,  where  they  might  have  become  easy  vic- 
tims without  the  use  of  ammunition.  But,  with  empty 
stomachs,  there  is  also  at  times  a  heart-hunger,  which 
pleases  a  higher  sense  and  closes  the  eye  to  gastric  wants. 

Later  in  the  same  day,  we  saw  at  a  great  distance 
what  seemed  like  two  men  in  motion.  We  hastened  to 
meet  them  with  social  anticipations.  Now  they  seemed 
tall — now  mere  dots  on  the  horizon.  I  thought  this  due 
to  their  movement  over  ice  irregularities.  But  boreal 
optics  play  havoc  with  the  eye  and  the  sense  of  per- 
spective. As  we  rose  suddenly  on  a  hummock,  where 
we  had  a  clearer  view,  the  objects  rose  on  wings !  They 
were  ravens  which  had  been  enlarged  and  reduced  by 
reflecting  and  refracting  surfaces  and  a  changing  atmos- 
phere, in  much  the  same  manner  as  a  curved  mirror 
makes  a  caricature  of  one's  self.  I  laughed — bitterly. 
Dazed,  bewildered,  there  was  nevertheless  for  me  a  joy 
in  seeing  these  living  creatures,  denizens  of  the  land 
toward  which  we  were  directed. 

The  bears  no  longer  sought  our  camp,  but  the  seals 
were  conveniently  scattered  along  our  track.  A  kindly 
world  had  spread  our  waistbands  to  fairly  normal  dimen- 
sions. The  palate  began  to  exercise  its  discriminating 
force.  Ducks  and  land  animals  were  sought  with 
greater  eagerness.  While  in  this  mood,  three  white 
caribou  were  secured.  They  were  beautiful  creatures, 
and  as  pleasing  to  the  palate  as  to  the  eye,  but  owing  to 
the  very  rough  ice  it  was  quite  impossible  to  carry  more 
than  a  few  days'  supply.  Usually  we  took  only  the 
choice  parts  of  the  game,  but  every  eatable  morsel  of 


340 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 


caribou  that  we  could  carry  was  packed  on  the  sledges. 
With  this  wealth  of  food  and  fuel  we  moved  along 
the  shores  of  Wellington  Channel  to  Pioneer  Bay.  We 
felt  that  we  were  steadily  on  our  way  homeward.  There 
was  no  premonition  of  the  keen  disappointment  that 
awaited  us,  of  the  inevitable  imprisonment  for  the  long 
Arctic  winter  and  the  days  of  starvation  that  were  to 
come. 


PTARMIGAN    CHICKS 


OVERLAND  TO  JONES  SOUND 

HOURS  OF  ICY  TORTURE — A  FRIGID  SUMMER  STORM  IN 
THE  BERG-DRIVEN  ARCTIC  SEA — A  PERILOUS  DASH 
THROUGH  TWISTING  LANES  OF  OPENING  WATER  IN  A 
CANVAS  CANOE — THE  DRIVE  OF  HUNGER. 

XXIII 

ADRIFT  ON  AN  ICEBERG 

As  we  neared  Pioneer  Bay,  along  the  coast  of 
North  Devon,  it  became  quite  evident  that  farther  ad- 
vance by  sledge  was  quite  impossible.  A  persistent 
southerly  wind  had  packed  the  channel  with  a  jam  of 
small  ice,  over  which  the  effort  of  sledging  was  a  hope- 
less task.  The  season  was  too  far  advanced  to  offer  the 
advantage  of  an  ice-foot  on  the  shore  line.  There  was 
no  open  water,  nor  any  game  to  supply  our  larder.  The 
caribou  was  mostly  used.  We  began  to  feel  the  crav- 
ing pain  of  short  rations. 

Although  the  distance  to  Lancaster  Sound  was 
short,  land  travel  was  impossible,  and,  with  no  food,  we 
could  not  await  the  drift  of  the  ice.  The  uncertainty 
of  game  was  serious,  with  nothing  as  a  reserve  to  await 
the  dubious  coming  of  a  ship.  If  game  should  appear, 
we  might  remain  on  the  ice,  accumulating  in  the  mean- 
time a  supply  of  meat  for  travel  by  canvas  boat  later. 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

This  boat  had  been  our  hope  in  moving  south,  but 
thus  far  had  not  been  of  service.  Forced  to  subsist 
mainly  on  birds,  the  ammunition  rapidly  diminished,  and 
something  had  to  be  done  at  once  to  prevent  famine. 

We  might  have  returned  to  the  game  haunts  of 
Grinnell  Peninsula,  but  it  seemed  more  prudent  to  cross 
the  land  to  Jones  Sound.  Here,  from  Sverdrup's  ex- 
perience, we  had  reason  to  expect  abundant  game.  By 
moving  eastward  there  would  be  afforded  the  alterna- 
tive of  pushing  northward  if  we  failed  to  get  to  the 
whalers.  The  temperature  now  remained  steadily  near 
the  freezing  point,  and  with  the  first  days  of  July  the 
barometer  became  unsteady. 

On  the  4th  of  July  we  began  the  climb  of  the  high- 
lands of  North  Devon,  winding  about  Devonian  cliffs 
toward  the  land  of  promise  beyond.  The  morning  was 
gray,  as  it  had  been  for  several  days,  but  before  noon 
black  clouds  swept  the  snowy  heights  and  poured  icy 
waters  over  us.  We  were  saturated  to  the  skin,  and 
shivered  in  the  chill  of  the  high  altitude.  Soon  after- 
wards a  light  breath-taking  wind  from  the  northwest 
froze  our  pasty  furs  into  sheets  of  ice.  Still  later,  a 
heavy  fall  of  snow  compelled  us  to  camp.  The  snow- 
storm continued  for  two  days,  and  held  us  in  a  snow- 
buried  tent,  with  little  food  and  no  fuel. 

Although  the  storm  occasioned  a  good  deal  of  suf- 
fering, it  also  brought  some  advantages.  The  land  had 
been  imperfectly  covered  with  snow,  and  we  had  been 
forced  to  drive  from  bank  to  bank,  over  bared  ground, 
to  find  a  workable  course.  But  now  all  was  well  sheeted 
with  crusted  snow.  Soon  the  gaunt,  dun-colored  cliffs  of 
North  Devon  ended  the  monotony  of  interior  snows, 


OVERLAND  TO  JONES  SOUND  343- 

and  beyond  was  seen  the  cheering  blue  of  Jones  Sound. 

Much  open  water  extended  along  the  north  shore 
to  beyond  Musk  Ox  Fiord.  The  southern  shores 
were  walled  with  pack-ice  for  a  hundred  miles  or 
more.  In  bright,  cold  weather  we  made  a  descent  to 
Eidsbotn  on  July  7th.  Here  a  diligent  search  for  food 
failed.  Daily  the  howl  of  wolves  and  the  cry  of  birds 
came  as  a  response  to  our  calling  stomachs.  A  scant 
supply  of  ducks  was  secured  for  the  men  with  an  expen- 
diture of  some  of  the  last  rifle  ammunition,  but  no  wal- 
ruses,- no  seals,  and  no  other  big  game  were  seen.  To 
secure  dog  food  seemed  quite  hopeless. 

We  now  had  the  saddest  incident  of  a  long  run  of 
trouble.  Open  water  ran  the  range  of  vision,  sledges 
were  no  longer  possible,  game  was  scarce,  our  ammuni- 
tion was  nearly  exhausted.  Our  future  fate  had  to  be 
worked  out  in  a  canvas  boat.  What  were  we  to  do  with 
the  faithful  dog  survivors?  In  the  little  boat  they  could 
not  go  with  us.  We  could  not  stay  with  them  and  live. 
We  must  part.  Two  had  already  left  us  to  join  their 
wolf  progenitors.  We  gave  the  others  the  same  liberty. 
One  sledge  was  cut  off  and  put  into  the  canvas  boat 
which  we  had  carried  to  the  Pole  and  back.  Our  sleep- 
ing-bags and  old  winter  clothing  were  given  as  food  to 
the  dogs.  All  else  was  snugly  packed  in  waterproof 
packages  as  well  as  possible,  and  placed  in  the  boat. 
With  sad  eyes,  we  left  the  shore.  The  dogs  howled  like 
crying  children;  we  still  heard  them  when  five  miles  off 
shore. 

Off  Cape  Vera  there  was  open  water,  and  beyond, 
as  far  eastward  as  we  could  see,  its  quivering  surface 
offered  a  restful  prospect.  As  we  advanced,  however, 


344  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

the  weather  proved  treacherous,  and  the  seas  rose  with 
sudden  and  disagreeable  thumps. 

At  times  we  camped  on  ice  islands  in  the  pack,  but 
the  pack-ice  soon  became  too  insecure,  being  composed 
of  small  pieces,  and  weakened  in  spots  by  the  sun.  Even 
a  moderate  gale  would  tear  a  pack  apart,  to  be  broken 
into  smaller  fragments  by  the  water.  Sometimes  we 
made  camp  in  the  boat,  with  a  box  for  a  pillow  and  a 
piece  of  bear  skin  for  a  cover. 

With  great  anxiety  we  pulled  to  reach  the  land  at 
Cape  Sparbo  before  a  storm  entrapped  us.  To  the 
north,  the  water  was  free  of  ice  as  far  as  the  shores  of 
Ellesmere  Land,  forty  miles  away.  To  avoid  the  glare 
of  the  midday  sun,  we  chose  to  travel  by  night,  but  we 
were  nearing  the  end  of  the  season  of  Arctic  double- 
days  and  midnight  suns,  when  the  winds  come  suddenly 
and  often. 

Soon  after  midnight  the  wind  from  the  Pacific 
came  in  short  puffs,  with  periods  of  calm  so  sudden  that 
we  looked  about  each  time  for  something  to  happen.  At 
about  the  same  time  there  came  long  swells  from  the 
northwest.  We  scented  a  storm,  although  at  that  time 
there  were  no  other  signs.  The  ice  was  examined  for  a 
possible  line  of  retreat  to  the  land,  but,  with  pressure 
ridges,  hummocks  and  breaks,  I  knew  this  was  impossi- 
ble. It  was  equally  hopeless  to  camp  on  such  treacher- 
ous ice.  Berg  ice  had  been  passed  the  day  before,  but 
this  was  about  as  far  behind  as  the  land  was  ahead. 

So  we  pulled  along  desperately,  while  the  swells 
shortened  and  rose.  The  atmosphere  became  thick  and 
steel  gray.  The  cliffs  of  Ellesmere  Land  faded,  while 
lively  clouds  tumbled  from  the  highlands  to  the  sea. 


OVERLAND  TO  JONES  SOUND  345 

We  were  left  no  alternative  but  to  seek  the  shelter 
of  the  disrupted  pack,  and  press  landward  as  best  we 
could.  We  had  hardly  landed  on  the  ice,  and  drawn 
our  boat  after  us,  when  the  wind  struck  us  with  such 
force  that  we  could  hardly  stand  against  it.  The  ice 
immediately  started  in  a  westward  direction,  veering  of? 
from  the  land  a  little  and  leaving  open  leads.  These 
leads,  we  now  saw,  were  the  only  possible  places  of 
safety.  For,  in  them,  the  waters  were  easy,  and  the 
wind  was  slightly  shut  off  by  the  walls  of  pressure  lines 
and  hummocks.  Furthermore,  they  offered  slants  now 
and  then  by  which  we  could  approach  the  land. 

The  sledge  was  set  under  the  boat  and  lashed.  All 
our  things  were  lashed  to  the  wooden  frame  of  the  canoe 
to  prevent  the  wind  and  the  sea  from  carrying  them 
away.  We  crossed  several  small  floes  and  jumped  the 
lines  of  water  separating  them,  pulling  sledge  and  canoe 
after  us.  The  pressure  lines  offered  severe  barriers. 
To  cross  them  we  were  compelled  to  separate  the  canoe 
from  its  sledge  and  remove  the  baggage.  All  of  this 
required  considerable  time.  A  sense  of  hopelessness 
filled  my  heart.  In  the  meantime,  the  wind  veered 
to  the  east  and  came  with  a  rush  that  left  us  helpless. 
We  sought  the  lee  of  a  hummock,  and  hoped  the  violence 
of  the  storm  would  soon  spend  itself,  but  there  were  no 
easy  spells  in  this  storm,  nor  did  it  show  signs  of  early 
cessation.  The  ice  about  us  moved  rapidly  westward 
and  slowly  seaward. 

It  was  no  longer  possible  to  press  toward  the  land, 
for  the  leads  of  water  were  too  wide  and  were  lined  with 
small  whitecaps,  while  the  tossing  seas  hurled  mountains 
of  ice  and  foaming  water  over  the  pack  edge. 


346  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

The  entire  pack  was  rising  and  falling  under  faint 
swells,  and  gradually  wearing  to  little  fragments.  The 
floe  on  which  we  stood  was  strong.  I  knew  it  would 
hold  out  longer  than  most  of  the  ice  about,  but  it  was 
not  high  enough  above  water  to  give  us  a  dry  footing  as 
the  seas  advanced. 

From  a  distance  to  the  windward  we  noted  a  low 
iceberg  slowly  gaining  on  our  floe.  It  was  a  welcome 
sight,  for  it  alone  could  raise  us  high  enough  above  the 
soul-despairing  rush  of  the  icy  water. 

Its  rich  ultramarine  blue  promised  ice  of  a  sufficient 
strength  to  withstand  the  battling  of  the  storm.  Never 
were  men  on  a  sinking  ship  more  anxious  to  reach  a 
rock  than  we  were  to  reach  this  blue  stage  of  ice.  It 
offered  several  little  shelves,  upon  which  we  could  rise 
out  of  the  water  upon  the  ice.  We  watched  with 
anxious  eyes  as  the  berg  revolved  and  forced  the  other 
ice  aside. 

It  aimed  almost  directly  for  us,  and  would  prob- 
ably cut  our  floe.  We  prepared  for  a  quick  leap  upon 
the  deck  of  our  prospective  craft. 

Bearing  down  upon  us  it  touched  a  neighboring 
piece  and  pushed  us  away.  We  quickly  pulled  to  the 
other  pan,  and  then  found,  to  our  dismay,  a  wide  band 
of  mushy  slush,  as  impossible  to  us  for  a  footing  as 
quicksand  would  have  been.  As  the  berg  passed,  how- 
ever, it  left  a  line  of  water  behind  it.  We  quickly  threw 
boat  and  sledge  into  this,  paddled  after  the  berg,  and, 
Teaching  it,  leaped  to  its  security,  What  a  relief  to  be 
raised  above  the  crumbling  pack-ice  and  to  watch  from 
safety  the  thundering  of  the  elements! 

The  berg  which  we  had  boarded  was  square,  with 


OVERLAND  TO  JONES  SOUND  347 

rounded  corners.  Its  highest  points  were  about  twenty 
feet  above  water;  the  general  level  was  about  ten  feet. 
The  ice  was  about  eighty  feet  thick,  and  its  width  was 
about  a  hundred  feet.  These  dimensions  assured  sta- 
bility, for  if  the  thing  had  turned  over,  as  bergs  fre- 
quently do,  we  should  be  left  to  seek  breath  among  the 
whales. 

It  was  an  old  remnant  of  a  much  larger  berg  which 
had  stood  the  Arctic  tempest  for  many  years.  This  we 
figured  out  from  the  hard  blue  of  the  ice  and  its  many 
caverns  and  pinnacles.  We  were,  therefore,  on  a  se- 
cure mass  of  crystal  which  was  not  likely  to  suffer 
severely  from  a  single  storm.  Its  upper  configuration, 
however,  though  beautiful  in  its  countless  shades  of  blue, 
did  not  offer  a  comfortable  berth.  There  were  three 
pinnacles  too  slippery  and  too  steep  to  climb,  with  a 
slope  leading  by  a  gradual  incline  on  each  side.  Along 
these  the  seas  had  worn  grooves  leading  to  a  central 
concavity  filled  with  water.  The  only  space  which  we 
could  occupy  was  the  crater-like  rim  around  this  lake. 
At  this  time  we  had  to  endure  only  the  seething  pitch  of 
the  sea  and  the  cutting  blast  of  the  storm. 

The  small  ice  about  kept  the  seas  from  boarding. 
To  prevent  our  being  thrown  about  on  the  slippery  sur- 
face, we  cut  holes  into  the  pinnacles  and  spread  lines 
about  them,  to  which  we  clung.  The  boat  was  securely 
fastened  in  a  similar  way  by  cutting  a  makeshift  for  a 
ringbolt  in  the  floor  of  ice.  Then  we  pushed  from  side 
to  side  along  the  lines,  to  encourage  our  hearts  and  to 
force  our  circulation.  Although  the  temperature  was 
only  at  the  freezing  point,  it  was  bitterly  cold,  and  we 
were  in  a  bad  way  to  weather  a  storm. 


348  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

The  sea  had  drenched  us  from  head  to  foot.  Only 
our  shirts  were  dry.  With  hands  tightly  gripped  to  the 
line  and  to  crevasses,  we  received  the  spray  of  the  break- 
ing icy  seas  while  the  berg  ploughed  the  scattered  pack 
and  plunged  seaward.  The  cold,  though  only  at  the 
freezing  point,  pierced  our  snow-pasted  furs  and 
brought  shivers  worse  than  that  of  zero's  lowest.  Thus 
the  hours  of  physical  torture  and  mental  anguish  passed, 
while  the  berg  moved  towards  the  gloomy  black  cliff  of 
Hell  Gate.  Here  the  eastern  sky  bleached  and  the 
south  blued,  but  the  falling  temperature  froze  our  gar- 
ments to  coats  of  mail.  We  were  still  dressed  in  part 
of  our  winter  garments. 

The  coat  was  of  sealskin,  with  hood  attached;  the 
shirt  of  camel's  hair  blanket,  also  with  a  hood ;  the  trou- 
sers of  bear  fur;  boots  of  seal,  with  hair  removed,  and 
stockings  of  hare  fur.  The  mittens  were  of  seal,  and 
there  were  pads  of  grass  for  the  palms  and  soles.  Our 
garments,  though  not  waterproof,  shed  water  and  ex- 
cluded the  winds,  but  there  is  a  cold  that  comes  with  wet 
garments  and  strong  winds  that  sets  the  teeth  to  chat- 
tering and  the  skin  to  quivering. 

As  all  was  snug  and  secure  on  the  berg,  we  began  to 
take  a  greater  interest  in  our  wind  and  sea-propelled 
craft.  Its  exposed  surface  was  swept  by  the  winds, 
while  its  submarine  surface  was  pushed  by  tides  and 
undercurrents,  giving  it  a  complex  movement  at  vari- 
ance with  the  pack-ice.  It  ploughed  up  miles  of  sea-ice, 
crushing  and  throwing  it  aside. 

After  several  hours  of  this  kind  of  navigation — 
which  was  easy  for  us,  because  the  movement  of  the 
swell  and  the  breaking  of  the  sea  did  not  inflict  a  hard- 


OVERLAND  TO  JONES  SOUND  349 

ship — the  berg  suddenly,  without  any  apparent  reason, 
took  a  course  at  right  angles  to  the  wind,  and  delib- 
erately pushed  out  of  the  pack  into  the  seething  seas. 
This  rapid  shift  from  comfort  to  the  wild  agitation  of 
the  black  waters  made  us  gasp.  The  seas,  with  boulders 
of  ice,  rolled  up  over  our  crest  and  into  the  concavity  of 
the  berg,  leaving  no  part  safe.  Seizing  our  axes,  we 
cut  many  other  anchor  holes  in  the  ice,  doubly  secured 
our  life  lines,  and  shifted  with  our  boat  to  the  edge  of 
the  berg  turned  to  the  wind.  The  hours  of  suspense 
and  torment  thus  spent  seemed  as  long  as  the  winters  of 
the  Eskimo.  The  pack  soon  became  a  mere  pearly  glow 
against  a  dirty  sky.  We  were  rushing  through  a  seeth- 
ing blackness,  made  more  impressive  by  the  pearl  and 
blue  of  the  berg  and  the  white,  ice-lined  crests. 

What  could  we  do  to  keep  the  springs  of  life  from 
snapping  in  such  a  world  of  despair?  Fortunately,  we 
were  kept  too  busy  dodging  the  storm-driven  missiles  of 
water  and  ice  to  ponder  much  over  our  fate.  Other- 
wise the  mind  could  not  have  stood  the  infernal  strain. 

Our  bronze  skins  were  adapted  to  cold  and  winds, 
but  the  torture  of  the  cold,  drenching  water  was  new. 
For  five  months  we  had  been  battered  by  winds  and  cut 
by  frosts,  but  water  was  secured  only  by  melting  ice  with 
precious  fuel  which  we  had  carried  thousands  of  miles. 
If  we  could  get  enough  of  the  costly  liquid  to  wash  our 
cold  meals  down,  we  had  been  satisfied.  The  luxury  of 
a  face  wash  or  a  bath,  except  by  the  wind-driven  snows, 
was  never  indulged  in.  Now,  in  stress  of  danger,  we 
were  getting  it  from  every  direction.  The  torments  of 
frost  about  the  Pole  were  nothing  compared  to  this  boil- 
ing blackness. 


350  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Twenty-four  hours  elapsed  before  there  was  any 
change.  Such  calls  of  nature  as  hunger  or  thirst  or 
sleep  were  left  unanswered.  We  maintained  a  terrific 
struggle  to  keep  from  being  washed  into  the  sea.  At 
last  the  east  paled,  the  south  became  blue,  and  the  land 
on  both  sides  rose  in  sight.  The  wind  came  steadily,  but 
reduced  in  force,  with  a  frosty  edge  that  hardened  our 
garments  to  sheets  of  ice. 

We  were  not  far  from  the  twin  channels,  Cardigan 
Strait  and  Hell  Gate,  where  the  waters  of  the  Pacific 
and  Atlantic  meet.  We  were  driving  for  Cardigan 
Strait,  past  the  fiords  into  which  we  had  descended  from 
the  western  seas  two  weeks  before.  We  had,  therefore, 
lost  an  advance  of  two  weeks  in  one  day,  and  we  had 
probably  lost  our  race  with  time  to  reach  the  life-saving 
haunts  of  the  Eskimo. 

Still,  this  line  of  thought  was  foreign  to  us.  Not 
far  away  were  bold  cliffs  from  which  birds  descended  to 
the  rushing  waters.  At  the  sight  my  heart  rose.  Here 
we  saw  the  satisfying  prospect  of  an  easy  breakfast  if 
only  the  waves  would  cease  to  fold  in  white  crests. 
Long  trains  of  heavy  ice  were  rushing  with  railroad 
speed  out  of  the  straits.  As  we  watched,  the  tempera- 
ture continued  to  fall.  Soon  the  north  blackened  with 
swirling  curls  of  smoke.  The  wind  came  with  the  sound 
of  exploding  guns  from  Hell  Gate.  What,  I  asked 
myself,  was  to  be  our  fate  now? 

We  took  a  southwest  course.  Freezing  seas  washed 
over  the  berg  and  froze  our  numbed  feet  to  the  ice,  upon 
which  a  footing  otherwise  would  have  been  very  difficult. 
Adrift  in  a  vast,  ice-driven,  storm-thundering  ocean,  I 
stood  silent,  paralyzed  with  terror.  After  a  few  hours, 


OVERLAND  TO  JONES  SOUND  351 

sentinel  floes  of  the  pack  slowly  shoved  toward  us,  and 
unresistingly,  we  were  ushered  into  the  harboring  influ- 
ence of  the  heavy  Polar  ice. 

The  berg  lost  its  erratic  movement,  and  soon  settled 
in  a  fixed  position.  The  wind  continued  to  tear  along  in 
a  mad  rage,  but  we  found  shelter  in  our  canoe,  dozing 
away  for  a  few  moments  while  one  paced  the  ice  as  a 
sentinel.  Slowly  a  lane  of  quiet  water  appeared  among 
the  floes.  We  heard  a  strangely  familiar  sound  which 
set  our  hearts  throbbing.  The  walrus  and  the  seal,  one 
by  one,  came  up  to  the  surface  to  blow.  Here,  right  be- 
fore us,  was  big  game,  with  plenty  of  meat  and  fat.  We 
were  starving,  but  we  gazed  almost  helplessly  on 
plenty,  for  its  capture  was  difficult  for  us. 

We  had  only  a  few  cartridges  and  four  cans  of  pem- 
mican  in  our  baggage.  These  were  reserved  for  use  to 
satisfy  the  last  pangs  of  famine.  That  time  had  not  yet 
arrived.  Made  desperate  by  hunger,  after  a  brief  rest 
we  began  to  seek  food.  Birds  flying  from  the  land  be- 
came our  game  at  this  time.  We  could  secure  these  with 
the  slingshot  made  by  the  Eskimos,  and  later,  by  en- 
tangling loops  in  lines,  and  in  various  other  ways  which 
hunger  taught  us. 

A  gull  lighted  on  a  pinnacle  of  our  berg.  Quietly 
but  quickly  we  placed  a  bait  and  set  a  looped  line.  We 
watched  with  bated  breath.  The  bird  peered  about, 
espied  the  luring  bait,  descended  with  a  flutter  of  wings, 
pecked  the  pemmican.  There  was  a  snapping  sound — 
the  bird  was  ours.  Leaping  upon  it,  we  rapidly  cut  it 
in  bits  and  ravenously  devoured  it  raw.  Few  things  I 
have  ever  eaten  tasted  so  delicious  as  this  meat,  which 
had  the  flavor  of  cod-liver  oil. 


352  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

The  ice  soon  jammed  in  a  grinding  pack  against 
the  land,  and  the  wind  spent  its  force  in  vain.  We  held 
our  position,  and  two  of  us,  after  eating  the  bird,  slept 
until  the  sentinel  called  us.  At  midnight  the  wind  eased 
and  the  ice  started  its  usual  rebound,  seaward  and  east- 
ward, with  the  tide. 

This  was  our  moment  for  escape.  We  were  about 
ten  miles  off  the  shore  of  Cape  Vera.  If  we  could  push 
our  canvas  canoe  through  the  channels  of  water  as  they 
opened,  we  might  reach  land.  We  quickly  prepared  the 
boat.  With  trepidation  we  pushed  it  into  the  black, 
frigid  waters.  We  hesitated  to  leave  the  sheltering  berg 
which  had  saved  our  lives.  Still,  it  had  served  its  pur- 
pose. To  remain  might  mean  our  being  carried  out  to 
sea.  The  ultimate  time  had  come  to  seek  a  more  secure 
refuge  on  terra  firma. 

Leaping  into  the  frail,  rocking  canoe,  we  pushed 
along  desperately  through  a  few  long  channels  to  reach 
a  wide,  open  space  of  water  landward.  Paddling  fran- 
tically, we  made  a  twisting  course  through  opening  lanes 
of  water,  ice  on  both  sides  of  us,  visible  bergs  bearing 
down  at  times  on  us,  invisible  bergs  with  spear-points  of 
ice  beneath  the  water  in  which  our  course  lay.  We  sped 
forward  at  times  with  quick  darts.  Suddenly,  and  to 
our  horror,  an  invisible  piece  of  ice  jagged  a  hole  in  the 
port  quarter.  Water  gushed  into  the  frail  craft.  In  a 
few  minutes  it  would  be  filled ;  we  should  sink  to  an  icy 
death!  Fortunately,  I  saw  a  floe  was  near,  and  wLile 
the  canoe  rapidly  filled  we  pushed  for  the  floe,  reaching 
it  not  a  moment  too  soon. 

A  boot  was  sacrificed  to  mend  the  canoe.  Patching 
the  cut,  we  put  again  into  the  sea  and  proceeded. 


OVERLAND  TO  JONES  SOUND  353 

The  middle  pack  of  ice  was  separated  from  the  land 
pack,  leaving  much  free  water.  But  now  a  land  breeze 
sprang  up  and  gave  us  new  troubles.  We  could  not 
face  the 'wind  and  sea,  so  we  took  a  slant  and  sought  the 
lee  of  the  pans  coming  from  the  land. 

Our  little  overloaded  canoe  weathered  the  seas  very 
well,  and  we  had  nothing  to  gain  and  everything  to  lose 
by  turning  back.  Again  we  were  drenched  with  spray, 
and  the  canoe  was  sheeted  with  ice  above  water.  The 
sun  was  passing  over  Hell  Gate.  Long  blue  shadows 
stretched  over  the  pearl-gray  sea.  By  these,  without 
resort  to  the  compass,  we  knew  it  was  about  midnight. 

As  we  neared  the  land-ice,  birds  became  numerous. 
The  waters  rose  in  easy  swells.  Still  nearer,  we  noted 
that  the  entire  body  of  land-ice  was  drifting  away.  A 
convenient  channel  opened  and  gave  us  a  chance  to  slip 
behind.  We  pointed  for  Cape  Vera,  dashed  over  the 
water,  and  soon,  to  pur  joy,  landed  on  a  ledge  of  lower 
rocks.  I  cannot  describe  the  relief  I  felt  in  reaching 
land  after  the  spells  of  anguish  through  which  we  had 
passed.  Although  these  barren  rocks  offered  neither 
food  nor  shelter,  still  we  were  as  happy  as  if  a  sentence 
of  death  had  been  remitted. 

Not  far  away  were  pools  of  ice  water.  These  we 
sought  first,  to  quench  our  thirst.  Then  we  scattered 
about,  our  eyes  eagerly  scrutinizing  the  land  for  break- 
fast. Soon  we  saw  a  hare  bounding  over  the  rocks.  As 
it  paused,  cocking  its  ears,  one  of  my  boys  secured  it  with 
a  sling-shot.  It  was  succulent;  we  cut  it  with  our 
knives.  Some  moss  was  found  among  the  rocks.  This 
was  a  breakfast  for  a  king.  I  returned  to  prepare  it. 
With  the  moss  as  fuel,  we  made  a  fire,  put  the  dripping 


354 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 


meat  in  a  pot,  and,  with  gloating  eyes,  watched  it  sim- 
mering. I  thrilled  with  the  joy  of  sheer  living,  with 
hunger  about  to  be  satisfied  by  cooked  food. 

Before  the  hare  was  ready  the  boys  came  along  with 
two  eider-ducks,  which  they  had  secured  by  looped  lines. 
We  therefore  had  now  an  advance  dinner,  with  a  re- 
freshing drink  and  a  stomach  full,  and  solid  rocks  to 
place  our  heads  upon  for  a  long  sleep.  These  solid 
rocks  were  more  delightful  and  secure  than  pillows  of 
down.  The  world  had  indeed  a  new  aspect  for  HS.  In 
reality,  however,  our  ultimate  prospect  of  escape  from 
famine  was  darker  than  ever. 


ARCTIC  HARE 


UNDER  THE  WHIP  OF  FAMINE 

BY  BOAT  AND  SLEDGE,  OVER  THE  DRIFTING  ICE  AND  STORMY 
SEAS  OF  JONES  SOUND — FROM  ROCK  TO  ROCK  IN 
QUEST  OF  FOOD MAKING  NEW  WEAPONS 

XXIV 

IMPRISONED  BY  THE  HAND  OF  FROST 

No  time  was  lost  in  our  onward  course.  Endeavor- 
ing at  once  to  regain  the  distance  lost  by  the  drifting 
berg,  we  sought  a  way  along  the  shores.  Here,  over  ice 
with  pools  of  water  and  slush,  we  dragged  our  sledge 
with  the  canvas  boat  ever  ready  to  launch.  Frequent 
spaces  of  water  necessitated  constant  ferrying.  We 
found,  however,  that  most  open  places  could  be  crossed 
with  sledge  attached  to  the  boat.  This  saved  much  time. 

We  advanced  from  ten  to  fifteen  miles  daily,  pitch- 
ing the  tent  on  land  or  sleeping  in  the  boat  in  pools  of 
ice  water,  as  the  conditions  warranted.  The  land  rose 
with  vertical  cliffs  two  thousand  feet  high,  and  offered 
no  life  except  a  few  gulls  and  guillemots.  By  gather- 
ing these  as  we  went  along,  a  scant  hand-to-mouth  sub- 
sistence daily  was  obtained. 

Early  in  August  we  reached  the  end  of  the  land- 
pack,  about  twenty-five  miles  east  of  Cape  Sparbo.  Be- 
yond was  a  water  sky,  and  to  the  north  the  sea  was 


356  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

entirely  free  of  ice.  The  weather  was  clear,  and  our 
ambitions  for  the  freedom  of  the  deep  rose  again. 

At  the  end  of  the  last  day  of  sledge  travel,  a  camp 
was  made  on  a  small  island.  Here  we  saw  the  first 
signs  of  Eskimo  habitation.  Old  tent  circles,  also  stone 
and  fox  traps  in  abundance,  indicated  an  ancient  village 
of  considerable  size.  On  the  mainland  we  discovered 
abundant  grass  and  moss,  with  signs  of  musk  ox,  ptar- 
migan, and  hare,  but  no  living  thing  was  detected. 
After  a  careful  search,  the  sledge  was  taken  apart  to 
serve  as  a  floor  for  the  boat.  All  our  things  were  snugly 
packed.  For  breakfast,  we  had  but  one  gull,  which  was 
divided  without  the  tedious  process  of  cooking. 

As  we  were  packing  the  things  onto  the  edge  of  the 
ice,  we  espied  an  oogzuk  seal.  Here  was  a  creature 
which  could  satisfy  for  a  while  our  many  needs.  Upon 
it  one  of  our  last  cartridges  was  expended.  The  seal 
fell.  The  huge  carcass  was  dragged  ashore.  All  of  its 
skin  was  jealously  taken.  For  this  would  make  harpoon 
lines  which  would  enable  the  shaping  of  Eskimo  imple- 
ments, to  take  the  place  of  the  rifles,  which,  with  ammu- 
nition exhausted,  would  be  useless.  Our  boots  could 
also  be  patched  with  bits  of  the  skin,  and  new  soles 
could  be  made.  Of  the  immense  amount  of  oogzuk  meat 
and  blubber  we  were  able  to  take  only  a  small  part ;  for, 
with  three  men  and  our  baggage  and  sledge  in  the  little 
canvas  boat,  it  was  already  overloaded. 

The  meat  was  cached,  so  that  if  ultimate  want 
forced  our  retreat  we  might  here  prolong  our  existence 
a  few  weeks  longer.  There  was  little  wind,  and  the 
night  was  beautifully  clear.  The  sun  at  night  was  very 
close  to  the  horizon,  but  the  sparkle  of  the  shimmering 


UNDER  THE  WHIP  OF  FAMINE  357 

waters  gave  our  dreary  lives  a  bright  side.  On  the 
great  unpolished  rocks  of  the  point  east  of  Cape  Sparbo 
a  suitable  camping  spot  was  found,  a  prolonged  feed  of 
seal  was  indulged  in,  and  with  a  warm  sun  and  full 
stomachs,  the  tent  was  unnecessary.  Under  one  of  the 
rocks  we  found  shelter,  and  slept  with  savage  delight 
for  nine  hours. 

Another  search  of  the  accessible  land  offered  no 
game  except  ducks  and  gulls  far  from  shore.  Here  the 
tides  and  currents  were  very  strong,  so  our  start  had  to 
be  timed  with  the  outgoing  tide. 

Starting  late  one  afternoon,  we  advanced  rapidly 
beyond  Cape  Sparbo,  in  a  sea  with  an  uncomfortable 
swell.  But  beyond  the  Cape,  the  land-ice  still  offered 
an  edge  for  a  long  distance.  In  making  a  cut  across  a 
small  bay  to  reach  ice,  a  walrus  suddenly  came  up  be- 
hind the  canoe  and  drove  a  tusk  through  the  canvas. 
E-tuk-i-shook  quickly  covered  the  cut,  while  we  pulled 
with  full  force  for  a  pan  of  drift-ice  only  a  few  yards 
away.  The  boat,  with  its  load,  was  quickly  jerked  on 
the  ice.  Already  there  were  three  inches  of  water  in 
the  floor.  A  chilly  disaster  was  narrowly  averted.  Part 
of  a  boot  was  sacrificed  to  mend  the  boat. 

While  at  work  with  the  needle,  a  strong  tidal  cur- 
rent carried  us  out  to  sea.  An  increasing  wind  brought 
breaking  waves  over  the  edge  of  the  ice.  The  wind  for- 
tunately gave  a  landward  push  to  the  ice.  A  sledge- 
cover,  used  as  a  sail,  retarded  our  seaward  drift.  The 
leak  securely  patched,  we  pushed  off  for  the  land  ice. 
With  our  eyes  strained  for  breaking  seas,  the  boat  was 
paddled  along  with  considerable  anxiety.  Much  water 
was  shipped  in  these  dashes ;  constant  bailing  was  neces- 


358  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

sary.  Pulling  continuously  along  the  ice  for  eight  miles, 
and  when  the  leads  closed  at  times,  jumping  on  cakes 
and  pulling  the  boat  after  us,  we  were  finally  forced  to 
seek  a  shelter  on  the  ice-field. 

With  a  strong  wind  and  a  wet  fall  of  snow,  the  ice- 
camp  was  far  from  comfortable.  As  the  tide  changed, 
the  wind  came  from  the  west  with  a  heavy,  choppy  sea. 
Further  advance  was  impossible.  Sleeping  but  a  few 
minutes  at  a  time,  and  then  rising  to  note  coming  dan- 
gers, as  does  the  seal,  I  perceived,  to  my  growing  dis- 
may, a  separation  between  the  land  and  the  sea  ice.  We 
were  going  rapidly  adrift,  with  only  interrupted  spots 
of  sea-ice  on  the  horizon ! 

There  were  a  good  many  reefs  about,  which  quickly 
broke  the  ice,  and  new  leads  formed  on  every  side.  The 
boat  was  pushed  landward.  We  pulled  the  boat  on  the 
ice  when  the  leads  closed,  lowering  it  again  as  the  cracks 
opened.  By  carrying  the  boat  and  its  load  from  crack 
to  crack,  we  at  last  reached  the  land  waters,  in  which  we 
were  able  to  advance  about  five  miles  further,  camping 
on  the  gravel  of  the  first  river  which  we  had  seen.  Here 
we  were  storm-bound  for  two  days. 

There  were  several  pools  near  by.  Within  a  short 
distance  from  these  were  many  ducks.  With  the  sling- 
shot a  few  of  these  were  secured.  In  the  midst  of  our 
trouble,  with  good  appetites,  we  were  feeding  up  for 
future  contests  of  strength. 

With  a  shore  clear  of  ice,  we  could  afford  to  take 
some  chance  with  heavy  seas,  so  before  the  swell  sub- 
sided, we  pushed  off.  Coming  out  of  Braebugten  Bay, 
with  its  discharging  glaciers  and  many  reefs,  the  water 
dashed  against  the  perpendicular  walls  of  ice,  and  pre- 


UNDER  THE  WHIP  OF  FAMINE  359 

sented  a  disheartening  prospect.  These  reefs  could  be 
passed  over  only  when  the  sea  was  calm.  With  but  a 
half -day's  run  to  our  credit,  we  were  again  stopped. 

As  we  neared  our  objective  point,  on  the  fast  ice 
inside  of  a  reef,  we  were  greeted  with  the  glad  sight  of 
what  we  supposed  to  be  a  herd  of  musk  ox.  About 
three  miles  of  the  winter  ice  was  still  fast  to  the  land. 
Upon  this  we  landed,  cleared  the  canvas  boat,  and  pre- 
pared to  camp  in  it.  I  remained  to  guard  our  few  be- 
longings, while  the  two  Eskimo  boys  rushed  over  the  ice 
to  try  to  secure  the  musk  ox  with  the  lance.  It  was  a 
critical  time  in  our  career,  for  we  were  putting  to  test 
new  methods  of  hunting,  which  we  had  partly  devised 
after  many  hungry  days  of  preparation. 

I  followed  the  boys  with  the  glasses  as  they  jumped 
the  ice  crevasses  and  moved  over  the  mainland  with  the 
stealth  and  ease  of  hungry  wolves.  It  was  a  beautiful 
day.  The  sun  was  low  in  the  northwest,  throwing  beams 
of  golden  light  that  made  the  ice  a  scene  of  joy.  The 
great  cliffs  of  North  Devon,  fifteen  miles  away,  seemed 
very  near  through  the  clear  air.  Although  enjoying  the 
scene,  I  noted  in  the  shadow  of  an  iceberg  a  suspicious 
blue  spot,  which  moved  in  my  direction.  As  it  advanced 
in  the  sunlight  it  changed  from  blue  to  a  cream  color. 
Then  I  made  it  out  to  be  a  Polar  bear  which  we  had 
attacked  forty-eight  hours  previous. 

The  sight  aroused  a  feeling  of  elation.  Gradually, 
as  bruin  advanced  and  I  began  to  think  of  some  method 
of  defense,  a  cold  shiver  ran  up  my  spine.  The  dog  and 
rifle,  with  which  we  had  met  bears  before,  were 
absent.  To  run,  and  leave  our  last  bit  of  food  and  fuel, 
would  have  been  as  dangerous  as  to  stay.  A  Polar  bear 


360  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

will  always  attack  a  retreating  creature,  while  it  ap- 
proaches very  cautiously  one  that  holds  its  position. 
Furthermore,  for  some  reason,  the  bears  always  bore  a 
grudge  against  the  boat.  None  ever  passed  it  without 
testing  the  material  with  its  teeth  or  giving  it  a  slap  with 
its  paw.  At  this  critical  stage  of  our  adventure  the  boat 
was  linked  more  closely  to  our  destiny  than  the  clothes 
we  wore.  I  therefore  decided  to  stay  and  play  the  role 
of  the  aggressor,  although  I  had  nothing — not  even  a 
lance — with  which  to  fight. 

Then  an  idea  flashed  through  my  mind.  I  lashed  a 
knife  to  the  steering  paddle,  and  placed  the  boat  on  a 
slight  elevation  of  ice,  so  as  to  make  it  and  myself 
appear  as  formidable  as  possible.  Then  I  gathered 
about  me  all  the  bits  of  wood,  pieces  of  ice,  and  every- 
thing which  I  could  throw  at  the  creature  before  it  came 
to  a  close  contest,  reserving  the  knife  and  the  ice-ax  as 
my  last  resort.  When  all  was  ready,  I  took  my  position 
beside  the  boat  and  displayed  a  sledge-runner  moving 
rapidly  to  and  fro. 

The  bear  was  then  about  two  hundred  yards  away. 
It  approached  stealthily  behind  a  line  of  hummocks, 
with  only  its  head  occasionally  visible.  As  it  came  to 
within  three  hundred  feet,  it  rose  frequently  on  its  hind 
feet,  dropped  its  forepaws,  stretched  its  neck,  and 
pushed  its  head  up,  remaining  motionless  for  several 
seconds.  It  then  appeared  huge  and  beautiful. 

As  it  came  still  nearer,  its  pace  quickened.  I  began 
to  hurl  my  missiles.  Every  time  the  bear  was  hit,  it 
stopped,  turned  about,  and  examined  the  object.  But 
none  of  them  proving  palatable,  it  advanced  to  the  oppo- 
site side  of  the  boat,  and  for  a  moment  stood  and  eyed 


UNDER  THE  WHIP  OF  FAMINE  361 

me.  Its  nose  caught  the  odor  of  a  piece  of  oogzuk 
blubber  a  few  feet  beyond.  I  raised  the  sledge-runner 
and  brought  it  down  with  desperate  force  on  the  brute's 
nose.  It  grunted,  but  quickly  turned  to  retreat.  I  fol- 
lowed until  it  was  well  on  the  run. 

Every  time  it  turned  to  review  the  situation,  I  made 
a  show  of  chasing  it.  This  always  had  the  desired  effect 
of  hastening  its  departure.  It  moved  off,  however,  only 
a  short  distance,  and  then  sat  down,  sniffed  the  air,  and 
watched  my  movements.  As  I  turned  to  observe  the 
boys'  doings,  I  saw  them  only  a  short  distance  away, 
edging  upon  the  bear.  Their  group  of  musk  oxen  had 
proved  to  be  rocks,  and  they  had  early  noted  my  troubles 
and  were  hastening  to  enter  the  battle,  creeping  up  be- 
hind hummocks  and  pressure  ridges.  They  got  to 
within  a  few  yards  of  the  brute,  and  then  delivered  their 
two  lances  at  once,  with  lines  attached.  The  bear 
dropped,  but  quickly  recovered  and  ran  for  the  land. 
He  died  from  the  wounds,  for  a  month  later  we  found 
his  carcass  on  land,  placed  near  camp. 

For  two  days,  with  a  continuation  of  bad  luck, 
we  advanced  slowly.  Belcher  Point  was  passed  at  mid- 
night of  the  7th  of  August,  just  as  the  sun  sank  under 
the  horizon  for  the  first  time.  Beyond  was  a  nameless 
bay,  in  which  numerous  icebergs  were  stranded.  The 
bend  of  the  bay  was  walled  with  great  discharging  gla- 
ciers. A  heavy  sea  pitched  our  boat  like  a  leaf  in  a  gale. 
But,  by  seeking  the  shelter  of  bergs  and  passing  inside 
of  the  drift,  we  managed  to  push  to  an  island  for  camp. 

With  moving  glaciers  on  the  land,  and  the  sea 
storming  and  thundering,  sleep  was  impossible.  Ice- 
bergs in  great  numbers  followed  us  into  the  bay,  and 


362  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

later  the  storm-ground  sea-ice  filled  the  bay.  On 
August  8,  following  a  line  of  water  along  shore,  we 
started  eastward. 

A  strong  wind  on  our  backs,  with  quiet  waters,  sent 
the  little  boat  along  at  a  swift  pace.  After  a  run  of  ten 
miles,  a  great  quantity  of  ice,  coming  from  the  east,  filled 
the  bay  with  small  fragments  and  ensnared  us. 

Now  the  bay  was  jammed  with  a  pack  as  difficult 
to  travel  over  as  quicksand.  We  were  hopelessly  beset. 
The  land  was  sought,  but  it  offered  no  shelter,  no  life, 
and  no  place  flat  enough  to  lie  upon.  We  expected  that 
the  ice  would  break.  It  did  not;  instead,  new  winter 
ice  rapidly  formed. 

The  setting  sun  brought  the  winter  storms  and 
premonitions  of  a  long,  bitter  night.  Meanwhile  we 
eked  a  meagre  living  by  catching  occasional  birds,  which 
we  devoured  raw. 

Toward  the  end  of  August  we  pushed  out  on  the 
ensnaring  pack  to  a  small  but  solid  floe.  I  counted  on 
this  to  drift  somewhere — any  place  beyond  the  prison 
bars  of  the  glaciers.  Then  we  might  move  east  or  west 
to  seek  food.  Our  last  meat  was  used,  and  we  main- 
tained life  only  by  an  occasional  gull  or  guillemot.  This 
floe  drifted  to  and  fro,  and  slowly  took  us  to  Belcher 
Point,  where  we  landed  to  determine  our  fate.  To  the 
east,  the  entire  horizon  was  lined  with  ice.  Belcher  Point 
was  barren  of  game  and  shelter.  Further  efforts  for 
Baffin's  Bay  were  hopeless.  The  falling  temperature, 
the  rapidly  forming  young  ice,  and  the  setting  sun 
showed  us  that  we  had  already  gone  too  long  without 
finding  a  winter  refuge. 

Our  only  possible  chance  to  escape  death  from 


UNDER  THE  WHIP  OF  FAMINE  363 

famine  $nd  frost  was  to  go  back  to  Cape  Sparbo  and 
compel  the  walrus  that  ripped  our  boat  to  give  up  his 
blubber,  and  then  to  seek  our  fortunes  in  the  neighbor- 
hood. This  was  the  only  reachable  place  that  had  looked 
like  game  country.  With  empty  stomachs,  and  on  a 
heavy  sea,  we  pushed  westward  to  seek  our  fate.  The 
outlook  was  discouraging. 

During  all  our  enforced  imprisonment  we  were 
never  allowed  to  forget  that  the  first  duty  in  life  was  to 
provide  for  the  stomach.  Our  muscles  rested,  but  the 
signals  sent  over  the  gastric  nerve  kept  the  gray  matter 
busy. 

We  were  near  to  the  land  where  Franklin  and  his 
men  starved.  They  had  ammunition.  We  had  none. 
A  similar  fate  loomed  before  us.  We  had  seen  nothing 
to  promise  subsistence  for  the  winter,  but  this  cheerless 
prospect  did  not  interfere  with  such  preparations  as  we 
could  make  for  the  ultimate  struggle.  In  our  desperate 
straits  we  even  planned  to  attack  bears,  should  we  find 
any,  without  a  gun.  Life  is  never  so  sweet  as  when  its 
days  seem  numbered. 

The  complete  development  of  a  new  art  of  hunt- 
ting,  with  suitable  weapons,  was  reserved  for  the  dire 
needs  of  later  adventures.  The  problem  was  begun  by 
this  time.  By  an  oversight,  most  of  our  Eskimo  imple- 
ments had  been  left  on  the  returning  sledges  from 
Svartevoeg. 

We  were  thus  not  only  without  ammunition,  but 
also  without  harpoons  and  lances.  We  fortunately  had 
the  material  of  which  these  could  be  made,  and  the  boys 
possessed  the  savage  genius  to  shape  a  new  set  of  weap- 
ons. The  slingshot  and  the  looped  line,  which  had 


364  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

served  such  a  useful  purpose  in  securing  birds,  continued 
to  be  of  prime  importance.  In  the  sledge  was  excellent 
hickory,  which  was  utilized  in  various  ways.  Of  this, 
bows  and  arrows  could  be  made.  Combined  with  the 
slingshot  and  the  looped  line  snares,  the  combination 
would  make  our  warfare  upon  the  feathered  creatures 
more  effective.  We  counted  upon  a  similar  efficiency 
with  the  same  weapons  in  our  hoped-for  future  attacks 
upon  land  animals. 

The  wood  of  the  sledge  was  further  divided  to 
make  shafts  for  harpoons  and  lances.  Realizing  that 
our  ultimate  return  to  Greenland,  and  to  friends,  de- 
pended on  the  life  of  the  sledge,  the  wood  was  used 
sparingly.  Furthermore,  hickory  lends  itself  to  great 
economy.  It  bends  and  twists,  but  seldom  breaks  in 
such  a  manner  that  it  cannot  be  repaired.  We  had  not 
much  of  this  precious  fibre,  but  enough  for  the  time  to 
serve  our  purpose.  Along  shore  we  had  found  musk  ox 
horns  and  fragments  of  whale  bone.  Out  of  these  the 
points  of  both  harpoon  and  lance  were  made.  A  part 
of  the  sledge  shoe  was  sacrificed  to  make  metal  points 
for  the  weapons.  The  nails  of  the  cooking-box  served 
as  rivets.  The  seal  skin,  which  we  had  secured  a  month 
earlier,  was  now  carefully  divided  and  cut  into  suitable 
harpoon  and  lassoo  lines.  We  hoped  to  use  this  line  to 
capture  the  bear  and  the  musk  ox.  Our  folding  canvas 
boat  was  somewhat  strengthened  by  the  leather  from 
our  old  boots,  and  additional  bracing  by  the  ever  useful 
hickory  of  the  sledge.  Ready  to  engage  in  battle  with 
the  smallest  and  the  largest  creatures  that  might  come 
within  reach,  we  started  west  for  Cape  Sparbo.  Death, 
on  our  journey,  never  seemed  so  near. 


I/ 1 J 


'• 


13 


XV 


-»  T   5 


J* 

I  i. 


OBSERVATION  DETERMINING  THE  POLE — PHOTOGRAPH  FROM 
ORIGINAL  NOTE 


BEAR   FIGHTS   AND    WALRUS    BATTLES 

DANGEROUS    ADVENTURES    IN    A    CANVAS    BOAT ON    THE 

VERGE  OF  STARVATION,  A  MASSIVE  BRUTE,  WEIGHING 
THREE  THOUSAND  POUNDS,  IS  CAPTURED  AFTER  A 
FIFTEEN-HOUR  STRUGGLE — ROBBED  OF  PRECIOUS 
FOOD  BY  HUNGRY  BEARS 

XXV 

GAME  HAUNTS  DISCOVERED 

The  stormy  sea  rose  with  heavy  swells.  Ocean- 
ward,  the  waves  leaped  against  the  horizon  tumultu- 
ously.  Pursuing  our  vain  search  for  food  along  the 
southern  side  of  Jones  Sound,  early  in  September,  we 
had  been  obliged  to  skirt  rocky  coves  and  shelves  of  land 
on  which  we  might  seek  shelter  should  harm  come  to  the 
fragile  craft  in  which  we  braved  the  ocean  storms  and 
the  spears  of  unseen  ice  beneath  water. 

We  had  shaped  crude  weapons.  We  were  pre- 
pared to  attack  game.  We  were  starving;  yet  land  and 
sea  had  been  barren  of  any  living  thing. 

Our  situation  was  desperate.  In  our  course  it  was 
often  necessary,  as  now,  to  paddle  from  the  near  refuge 
of  low-lying  shores,  and  to  pass  precipitous  cliffs  and 
leaping  glaciers  which  stepped  threateningly  into  the 
sea.  Along  these  were  no  projecting  surfaces,  and  we 
passed  them  always  with  bated  anxiety.  A  sudden 


366  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

storm  or  a  mishap  at  such  a  time  would  have  meant 
death  in  the  frigid  sea.  And  now,  grim  and  suffering 
with  hunger,  we  clung  madly  to  life. 

Passing  a  glacier  which  rose  hundreds  of  feet  out  of 
the  green  sea,  heavy  waves  rolled  furiously  from  the 
distant  ocean.  Huge  bergs  rose  and  fell  against  the 
far-away  horizon  like  Titan  ships  hurled  to  destruction. 
The  waves  dashed  against  the  emerald  wall's  of  the 
smooth  icy  Gibraltar  with  a  thunderous  noise.  We  rose 
and  fell  in  the  frail  canvas  boat,  butting  the  waves,  our 
hearts  each  time  sinking. 

Suddenly  something  white  and  glittering  pierced 
the  bottom  of  the  boat!  It  was  the  tusk  of  a  walrus, 
gleaming  and  dangerous.  Before  we  could  grasp  the 
situation  he  had  disappeared,  and  water  gushed  into  our 
craft.  It  was  the  first  walrus  we  had  seen  for  several 
weeks.  An  impulse,  mad  under  the  circumstances,  rose 
in  our  hearts  to  give  him  chase.  It  was  the  instinctive 
call  of  the  hungering  body  for  food.  But  each  second 
the  water  rose  higher;  each  minute  was  imminent  with 
danger.  Instinctively  Ah-we-lah  pressed  to  the  floor  of 
the  boat  and  jammed  his  knee  into  the  hole,  thus  partly 
shutting  off  the  jetting,  leaping  inrush.  He  looked 
mutely  to  me  for  orders.  The  glacier  offered  no  stop- 
ping place.  Looking  about  with  mad  eagerness,  I  saw, 
seaward,  only  a  few  hundred  yards  away,  a  small  pan  of 
drift-ice.  With  the  desire  for  life  in  our  arms,  we  pushed 
toward  it  with  all  our  might.  Before  the  boat  was 
pulled  to  its  slippery  landing,  several  inches  of  water 
flooded  the  bottom.  Once  upon  it,  leaping  in  the  waves, 
we  breathed  with  panting  relief.  With  a  piece  of  boot 
the  hole  was  patched.  Although  we  should  have  pre- 


BEAR  FIGHTS  AND  WALRUS  BATTLES        367 

ferred  to  wait  to  give  the  walrus  a  wide  berth,  the  in- 
creasing swell  of  the  stormy  sea,  and  a  seaward  drift 
forced  us  away  from  the  dangerous  ice  cliffs. 

Launching  the  boat  into  the  rough  waters,  we 
pulled  for  land.  A  triangle  of  four  miles  had  to  be 
made  before  our  fears  could  be  set  at  rest.  A  school  of 
walrus  followed  us  in  the  rocking  waters  for  at  least 
half  of  the  distance.  Finally,  upon  the  crest  of  a  white- 
capped  wave,  we  were  lifted  to  firm  land.  Drawing  the 
boat  after  us,  we  ran  out  of  reach  of  the  hungry  waves, 
and  sank  to  the  grass,  desperate,  despairing,  utterly 
fatigued,  but  safe. 

Now  followed  a  long  run  of  famine  luck.  We 
searched  land  and  sea  for  a  bird  or  a  fish.  In  the  boat 
we  skirted  a  barren  coast,  sleeping  on  rocks  without 
shelter  and  quenching  our  thirst  by  glacial  liquid  till  the 
stomach  collapsed.  The  indifferent  stage  of  starvation 
was  at  hand  when  we  pulled  into  a  nameless  bay,  carried 
the  boat  on  a  grassy  bench,  and  packed  ourselves  in  it 
for  a  sleep  that  might  be  our  last. 

We  were  awakened  by  the  glad  sound  of  distant 
walrus  calls.  Through  the  glasses,  a  group  was  located 
far  off  shore,  on  the  middle  pack.  Our  hearts  began  to 
thump.  A  stream  of  blood  came  with  a  rush  to  our 
heads.  Our  bodies  were  fired  with  a  life  that  had  been 
foreign  to  us  for  many  moons.  No  famished  wolf  ever 
responded  to  a  call  more  rapidly  than  we  did.  Quickly 
we  dropped  the  boat  into  the  water  with  the  implements, 
and  pushed  from  the  famine  shores  with  teeth  set  for 
red  meat. 

The  day  was  beautiful,  and  the  sun  from  the  west 
poured  a  wealth  of  golden  light.  Only  an  occasional 


368  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

ripple  disturbed  the  glassy  blue  through  which  the  boat 
crept.  The  pack  was  about  five  miles  northward.  In 
our  eagerness  to  reach  it,  the  distance  seemed  spread  to 
leagues.  There  was  not  a  square  of  ice  for  miles  about 
which  could  have  been  sought  for  refuge  in  case  of  an 
attack.  But  this  did  not  disturb  us  now.  We  were 
blinded  to  everything  except  the  dictates  of  our  palates. 

As  we  advanced,  our  tactics  were  definitely  ar- 
ranged. The  animals  were  on  a  low  pan,  which  seemed 
to  be  loosely  run  into  the  main  pack.  We  aimed  for  a 
little  cut  of  ice  open  to  the  leeward,  where  we  hoped  to 
land  and  creep  up  behind  hummocks.  The  splash  of  our 
paddles  was  lost  in  the  noise  of  the  grinding  ice  and  the 
bellowing  of  walrus  calls. 

So  excited  were  the  Eskimos  that  they  could  hardly 
pull  an  oar.  It  was  the  first  shout  of  the  wilderness 
which  we  had  heard  in  many  months.  We  were  lean 
enough  to  appreciate  its  import.  The  boat  finally  shot 
up  on  the  ice,  and  we  scattered  among  the  ice  blocks  for 
favorable  positions.  Everything  was  in  our  favor.  We 
did  not  for  a  moment  entertain  a  thought  of  failure, 
although  in  reality,  with  the  implements  at  hand,  our 
project  was  tantamount  to  attacking  an  elephant  with 
pocket  knives. 

We  came  together  behind  an  unusually  high  icy 
spire  only  a  few  hundred  yards  from  the  herd.  Ten 
huge  animals  were  lazily  stretched  out  in  the  warm  sun. 
A  few  lively  babies  tormented  their  sleeping  mothers. 
There  was  a  splendid  line  of  hummocks,  behind  which 
we  could  advance  under  cover.  With  a  firm  grip  on 
harpoon  and  line,  we  started.  Suddenly  E-tuk-i-shook 
shouted  "Nannook!"  (Bear.) 


BEAR  FIGHTS  AND  WALRUS  BATTLES        369 

We  halted.  Our  implements  were  no  match  for  a 
bear.  But  we  were  too  hungry  to  retreat.  The  bear 
paid  no  attention  to  us.  His  nose  was  set  for  something 
more  to  his  liking.  Slowly  but  deliberately,  he  crept  up 
to  the  snoring  herd  while  we  watched  with  a  mad,  envi- 
ous anger  welling  up  within  us.  Our  position  was  help- 
less. His  long  neck  reached  out,  the  glistening  fangs 
closed,  and  a  young  walrus  struggled  in  the  air.  All 
of  the  creatures  woke,  but  too  late  to  give  battle.  With 
dismay  and  rage,  the  walruses  sank  into  the  water,  and 
the  bear  slunk  off  to  a  safe  distance,  where  he  sat  down 
to  a  comfortable  meal.  We  were  not  of  sufficient  im- 
portance to  interest  either  the  bear  or  the  disturbed  herd 
of  giants. 

Our  limbs  were  limp  when  we  returned  to  the  boat. 
The  sunny  glitter  of  the  waters  was  now  darkened  by 
the  gloom  of  danger  from  enraged  animals.  We 
crossed  to  the  barren  shores  in  a  circuitous  route,  where 
pieces  of  ice  for  refuge  were  always  within  reach. 

On  land,  the  night  was  cheerless  and  cold.  We 
were  not  in  a  mood  for  sleep.  In  a  lagoon  we  discovered 
moving  things.  After  a  little  study  of  their  vague  darts 
they  proved  to  be  fish.  A  diligent  search  under  stones 
brought  out  a  few  handfuls  of  tiny  finny  creatures. 
With  gratitude  I  saw  that  here  was  an  evening  meal. 
Seizing  them,  we  ate  the  wriggling  things  raw.  Cook- 
ing was  impossible,  for  we  had  neither  oil  nor  wood. 

On  the  next  day  the  sun  at  noon  burned  with  a  real 
fire — not  the  sham  light  without  heat  which  had  kept  day 
and  night  in  perpetual  glitter  for  several  weeks.  Not  a 
breath  of  air  disturbed  the  blue  glitter  of  the  sea.  Ice 
was  scattered  everywhere.  The  central  pack  was  far- 


370  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

ther  away,  but  on  it  rested  several  suspicious  black 
marks.  Through  the  glasses  we  made  these  out  to  be 
groups  of  walruses.  They  were  evidently  sound  asleep, 
for  we  heard  no  calls.  They  were  also  so  distributed 
that  there  was  a  hunt  both  for  bear  and  man  without 
interference. 

We  ventured  out  with  a  savage  desire  sharpened 
by  a  taste  of  raw  fish.  As  we  advanced,  several  other 
groups  were  noted  in  the  water.  They  gave  us  much 
trouble.  They  did  not  seem  ill-tempered,  but  danger- 
ously inquisitive.  Our  boat  was  dark  in  color  and  not 
much  larger  than  the  body  of  a  full-sized  bull.  To 
them,  I  presume,  it  resembled  a  companion  in  distress 
or  asleep.  A  sight  of  the  boat  challenged  their  curi- 
osity, and  they  neared  us  with  the  playful  intention  of 
testing  with  their  tusks  the  hardness  of  the  canvas.  We 
had  experienced  such  love  taps  before,  however,  with 
but  a  narrow  escape  from  drowning,  and  we  had  no 
desire  for  further  walrus  courtship. 

Fortunately,  we  could  maintain  a  speed  almost 
equal  to  theirs,  and  we  also  found  scattered  ice-pans, 
about  which  we  could  linger  while  their  curiosity  was 
being  satisfied  by  the  splash  of  an  occasional  stone. 

From  an  iceberg  we  studied  the  various  groups  of 
walruses  for  the  one  best  situated  for  our  primitive 
methods  of  attack.  We  also  searched  for  meddlesome 
bears.  None  was  detected.  Altogether  we  counted 
more  than  a  hundred  grunting,  snorting  creatures  ar- 
ranged in  black  hills  along  a  line  of  low  ice.  There  were 
no  hummocks  or  pressure  lifts,  under  cover  of  which  we 
might  advance  to  within  the  short  range  required  for  our 
harpoons.  All  of  the  walrus-encumbered  pans  were 


BEAR  FIGHTS  AND  WALRUS  BATTLES        371 

adrift  and  disconnected  from  the  main  pack.  Conflict- 
ing currents  gave  each  group  a  slightly  different  motion. 
We  studied  this  movement  for  a  little  while. 

We  hoped,  if  possible,  to  make  our  attack  from  the 
ice.  With  the  security  of  a  solid  footing,  there  was  no 
danger  and  there  was  a  greater  certainty  of  success. 
But  the  speed  of  the  ice  on  this  day  did  not  permit  such 
an  advantage.  We  must  risk  a  water  attack.  This  is 
not  an  unusual  method  of  the  Eskimo,  but  he  follows  it 
with  a  kayak,  a  harpoon  and  line  fitted  with  a  float  and 
a  drag  for  the  end  of  his  line.  Our  equipment  was  only 
a  makeshift,  and  could  not  be  handled  in  the  same  way. 

Here  was  food  in  massive  heaps.  We  had  had  no 
breakfast  and  no  full  meal  for  many  weeks.  Something 
must  be  done.  The  general  drift  was  eastward,  but  the 
walrus  pans  drifted  slightly  faster  than  the  main  pack. 
Along  the  pack  were  several  high  points,  projecting  a 
considerable  distance  seaward.  We  took  our  position 
in  the  canvas  boat  behind  one  of  these  floating  capes,  and 
awaited  the  drift  of  the  sleeping  monsters. 

Their  movement  was  slow  enough  to  give  us  plenty 
of  time  to  arrange  our  battle  tactics.  The  most  vital 
part  of  the  equipment  was  the  line.  If  it  were  lost,  we 
could  not  hope  to  survive  the  winter.  It  could  not  be 
replaced,  and  without  it  we  could  not  hope  to  cope  with 
the  life  of  the  sea,  or  even  that  of  the  land.  The  line  was 
a  new,  strong  sealskin  rawhide  of  ample  length,  which 
had  been  reserved  for  just  such  an  emergency.  At- 
tached to  the  harpoon,  with  the  float  properly  adjusted, 
it  is  seldom  lost,  for  the  float  moves  and  permits  no 
sudden  strain. 

To  safeguard  the  line,  a  pan  was  selected  only  a  few 


372  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

yards  in  diameter.  This  was  arranged  to  do  the  duty 
of  a  float  and  a  drag.  With  the  knife  two  holes  were 
cut,  and  into  these  the  line  was  fastened  near  its  center. 
The  harpoon  end  was  taken  into  the  boat,  the  other  end 
was  coiled  and  left  in  a  position  where  it  could  be  easily 
picked  from  the  boat  later.  Three  important  purposes 
were  secured  by  this  arrangement — the  line  was  relieved 
of  a  sudden  strain;  if  it  broke,  only  half  would  be  lost; 
and  the  unused  end  would  serve  as  a  binder  to  other  ice 
when  the  chase  neared  its  end. 

Now  the  harpoon  was  set  to  the  shaft,  and  the  bow 
of  our  little  twelve-foot  boat  cleared  for  action.  Peep- 
ing over  the  wall  of  ice,  we  saw  the  black-littered  pans 
slowly  coming  toward  us.  Our  excitement  rose  to  a 
shouting  point.  But  our  nerves  were  under  the  disci- 
pline of  famine.  The  pan,  it  was  evident,  would  go  by 
us  at  a  distance  of  about  fifty  feet. 

The  first  group  of  walruses  were  allowed  to  pass. 
They  proved  to  be  a  herd  of  twenty-one  mammoth  crea- 
tures, and,  entirely  aside  from  the  danger  of  attack,  their 
unanimous  plunge  would  have  raised  a  sea  that  must 
have  swamped  us. 

On  the  next  pan  were  but  three  spots.  At  a  dis- 
tance we  persuaded  ourselves  that  they  were  small — for 
we  had  no  ambition  for  formidable  attacks.  One  thou- 
sand pounds  of  meat  would  have  been  sufficient  for  us. 
They  proved,  however,  to  be  the  largest  bulls  of  the  lot. 
As  they  neared  the  point,  the  hickory  oars  of  the  boat 
were  gripped — and  out  we  shot.  They  all  rose  to  meet 
us,  displaying  the  glitter  of  ivory  tusks  from  little 
heads  against  huge  wrinkled  necks.  They  grunted  and 
snorted  viciously — but  the  speed  of  the  boat  did  not 


BEAR  FIGHTS  AND  WALRUS  BATTLES        373 

slacken.  E-tuk-i-shook  rose.  With  a  savage  thrust  he 
sank  the  harpoon  into  a  yielding  neck. 

The  walruses  tumbled  over  themselves  and  sank 
into  the  water  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  pan.  We 
pushed  upon  the  vacated  floe  without  leaving  the  boat, 
taking  the  risk  of  ice  puncture  rather  than  walrus 
thumps.  The  short  line  came  up  with  a  snap.  The  ice 
pan  began  to  plough  the  sea.  It  moved  landward. 
What  luck!  I  wondered  if  the  walrus  would  tow  us 
and  its  own  carcass  ashore.  We  longed  to  encourage 
the  homing  movement,  but  we  dared  not  venture  out. 
Other  animals  had  awakened  to  the  battle  call,  and  now 
the  sea  began  to  seethe  and  boil  with  enraged,  leaping 
red-eyed  monsters. 

The  float  took  a  zigzag  course  in  the  offing.  We 
watched  the  movement  with  a  good  deal  of  anxiety.  Our 
next  meal  and  our  last  grip  on  life  were  at  stake.  For 
the  time  being  nothing  could  be  done. 

The  three  animals  remained  together,  two  pushing 
the  wounded  one  along  and  holding  it  up  during  breath- 
ing spells.  In  their  excitement  they  either  lost  their 
bearings  or  deliberately  determined  to  attack.  Now 
three  ugly  snouts  pointed  at  us.  This  was  greatly  to 
our  advantage,  for  on  ice  we  were  masters  of  the 
situation. 

Taking  inconspicuous  positions,  we  awaited  the  as- 
sault. The  Eskimos  had  lances,  I  an  Alpine  axe.  The 
walruses  dove  and  came  on  like  torpedo  boats,  rising 
almost  under  our  noses,  with  a  noise  that  made  us  dodge. 
In  a  second  two  lances  sank  into  the  harpooned  strug- 
glers.  The  water  was  thrashed.  Down  again  went  the 
three.  The  lances  were  jerked  back  by  return  lines,  and 


374  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

in  another  moment  we  were  ready  for  another  assault 
from  the  other  side.  But  they  dashed  on,  and  pulled  the 
float-floe,  on  which  we  had  been,  against  the  one  on  which 
we  stood,  with  a  crushing  blow. 

Here  was  our  first  chance  to  secure  the  unused  end 
of  the  line,  fastened  on  the  other  floe.  Ah-we-lah 
jumped  to  the  floe  and  tossed  me  the  line.  The  spiked 
shaft  of  the  ice-axe  was  driven  in  the  ice  and  the  line 
fixed  to  it,  so  now  the  two  floes  were  held  together.  Our 
stage  of  action  was  enlarged,  and  we  had  the  advantage 
of  being  towed  by  the  animals  we  fought. 

Here  was  the  quiet  sport  of  the  fisherman  and  the 
savage  excitement  of  the  battle-field  run  together  in  a 
new  chase.  The  struggle  was  prolonged  in  successive 
stages.  Time  passed  swiftly.  In  six  hours,  during 
which  the  sun  had  swept  a  quarter  of  the  circle,  the  twin 
floes  were  jerked  through  the  water  with  the  rush  of  a 
gunboat.  The  jerking  line  attached  to  our  enraged 
pilots  sent  a  thrill  of  life  which  made  our  hearts  jump. 
The  lances  were  thrown,  the  line  was  shortened,  a  can- 
nonade of  ice  blocks  was  kept  up,  but  the  animal  gave  no 
signs  of  weakening.  Seeing  that  we  could  not  inflict 
dangerous  wounds,  our  tactics  were  changed  to  a  kind  of 
siege,  and  we  aimed  not  to  permit  the  animal  its  breath- 
ing spells. 

The  line  did  not  begin  to  slacken  until  midnight. 
The  battle  had  been  on  for  almost  twelve  hours.  But 
we  did  not  feel  the  strain  of  action,  nor  did  our  chronic 
hunger  seriously  disturb  us.  Bits  of  ice  quenched  our 
thirst  and  the  chill  of  night  kept  us  from  sweating. 
With  each  rise  of  the  beast  for  breath  now,  the  line 
slackened.  Gently  it  was  hauled  in  and  secured.  Then 


BEAR  FIGHTS  AND  WALRUS  BATTLES        375 

a  rain  of  ice  blocks,  hurkd  in  rapid  succession,  drove  the 
spouting  animals  down.  Soon  the  line  was  short  enough 
to  deliver  the  lance  in  the  captured  walrus  at  close  range. 
The  wounded  animal  was  no*w  less  troublesome,  but  the 
others  tore  about  under  us  like  submarine  boats,  and  at 
the  most  unexpected  moments  would  shoot  up  with  a 
wild  rush. 

We  did  not  attempt  to  attack  them,  however.  All 
our  attention  was  directed  to  the  end  of  the  line.  The 
lance  was  driven  with  every  opportunity.  It  seldom 
missed,  but  the  action  was  more  like  spurs  to  a  horse, 
changing  an  intended  attack  upon  us  to  a  desperate 
plunge  into  the  deep,  and  depriving  the  walrus  of 
oxygen. 

Finally,  after  a  series  of  spasmodic  encounters 
which  lasted  fifteen  hours,  the  enraged  snout  turned 
blue,  the  fiery  eyes  blackened,  and  victory  was  ours — not 
as  the  result  of  the  knife  alone,  not  in  a  square  fight  of 
brute  force,  but  by  the  superior  cunning  of  the  human 
animal  under  the  stimulus  of  hunger. 

During  all  this  time  we  had  been  drifting.  Now,  as 
the  battle  ended,  we  were  not  far  from  a  point  about 
three  miles  south  of  our  camp.  Plenty  of  safe  pack-ice 
was  near.  A  primitive  pulley  was  arranged  by  passing 
the  line  through  slits  in  the  walrus*  nose  and  holes  in  the 
ice.  The  great  carcass,  weighing  perhaps  three  thou- 
sand pounds,  was  drawn  onto  the  ice  and  divided  into 
portable  pieces.  Before  the  sun  poured  its  morning 
beams  over  the  ice,  all  had  been  securely  taken  ashore. 

With  ample  blubber,  a  camp  fire  was  now  made  be- 
tween two  rocks  by  using  moss  to  serve  as  a  wick.  Soon, 
pot  after  pot  of  savory  meat  was  voraciously  consumed. 


376  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

We  ate  with  a  mad,  vulgar,  insatiable  hunger.  We 
spoke  little.  Between  gulps,  the  huge  heap  of  meat  and 
blubber  was  cached  under  heavy  rocks,  and  secured — so 
we  thought — from  bears,  wolves  and  foxes. 

When  eating  was  no  longer  possible,  sleeping  dens 
were  arranged  in  the  little  boat,  and  in  it,  like  other  glut- 
tonous animals  after  an  engorgement,  we  closed  our  eyes 
to  a  digestive  sleep.  For  the  time,  at  least,  we  had  fath- 
omed the  depths  of  gastronomic  content,  and  were  at 
ease  with  ourselves  and  with  a  bitter  world  of  inhuman 
strife. 

At  the  end  of  about  fifteen  hours,  a  stir  about  our 
camp  suddenly  awoke  us.  We  saw  a  huge  bear  nosing 
about  our  fireplace.  We  had  left  there  a  walrus  joint, 
weighing  about  one  hundred  pounds,  for  our  next  meal. 
We  jumped  up,  all  of  us,  at  once,  shouting  and  making 
a  pretended  rush.  The  bear  took  up  the  meat  in  his 
forepaws  and  walked  off,  man-like,  on,  two  legs,  with  a 
threatening  grunt.  His  movement  was  slow  and  cau- 
tious, and  his  grip  on  the  meat  was  secure.  Occasion- 
ally he  veered  about,  with  a  beckoning  turn  of  the  head, 
and  a  challenging  call.  But  we  did  not  accept  the  chal- 
lenge. After  moving  away  about  three  hundred  yards 
on  the  sea-ice,  he  calmly  sat  down  and  devoured  our 
prospective  meal. 

With  lances,  bows,  arrows,  and  stones  in  hand,  we 
next  crossed  a  low  hill,  beyond  which  was  located  our 
precious  cache  of  meat.  Here,  to  our  chagrin,  we  saw 
two  other  bears,  with  heads  down  and  paws  busily  dig- 
ging about  the  cache.  We  were  not  fitted  for  a  hand-to- 
hand  encounter.  Still,  our  lives  were  equally  at  stake, 
whether  we  attacked  or  failed  to  attack.  Some  defense 


BEAR  FIGHTS  AND  WALRUS  BATTLES        377 

must  be  made.  With  a  shout  and  a  fiendish  rush,  we 
attracted  the  busy  brutes'  attention.  They  raised  their 
heads,  turned,  and  to  our  delight  and  relief,  grudgingly 
walked  off  seaward  on  the  moving  ice.  Each  had  a  big 
piece  of  our  meat  with  him. 

Advancing  to  the  cache,  we  found  it  absolutely  de- 
pleted. Many  other  bears  had  been  there.  The  snow 
and  the  sand  was  trampled  down  with  innumerable  bear 
tracks.  Our  splendid  cache  of  the  day  previous  was  en- 
tirely lost.  We  could  have  wept  with  rage  and  disap- 
pointment. One  thing  we  were  made  to  realize,  and 
that  was  that  life  here  was  now  to  be  a  struggle  with  the 
bears  for  supremacy.  With  little  ammunition,  we  were 
not  at  all  able  to  engage  in  bear  fights.  So,  baffled,  and 
unable  to  resent  our  robbery,  starvation  again  confront- 
ing us,  we  packed  our  few  belongings  and  moved  west- 
ward over  Braebugten  Bay  to  Cape  Sparbo. 


A  THIEF  OF  THE  NORTH 


BULL  FIGHTS  WITH  THE  MUSK  OX 

AN    ANCIENT   CAVE   EXPLORED   FOR   SHELTER DEATH    BY 

STARVATION    AVERTED    BY    HAND-TO-HAND    ENCOUN- 
TERS WITH  WILD  ANIMALS 

XXVI 

To  THE  WINTER  CAMP  AT  CAPE  SPARBO 

As  we  crossed  the  big  bay  to  the  east  of  Cape 
Sparbo,  our  eyes  were  fixed  on  the  two  huge  Archaen 
rocks  which  made  remarkable  landmarks,  rising  sud- 
denly to  an  altitude  of  about  eighteen  thousand  feet. 
They  appear  like  two  mountainous  island  lifted  out  of 
the  water.  On  closer  approach,  however,  we  found  the 
islands  connected  with  the  mainland  by  low  grassy 
plains,  forming  a  peninsula.  The  grassy  lands  seemed 
like  promising  grounds  for  caribou  and  musk  ox.  The 
off-lying  sea,  we  also  found,  was  shallow.  In  this,  I 
calculated,  would  be  food  to  attract  the  seal  and  walrus. 

In  our  slow  movement  over  the  land  swell  of  the 
crystal  waters,  it  did  not  take  long  to  discover  that  our 
conjecture  was  correct. 

Pulling  up  to  a  great  herd  of  walrus,  we  prepared 
for  battle.  But  the  sea  suddenly  rose,  the  wind  in- 
creased, and  we  were  forced  to  abandon  the  chase  and 
seek  shelter  on  the  nearest  land. 

We  reached  Cape  Sparbo,  on  the  shores  of  Jones 


BULL  FIGHTS  WITH  THE  MUSK  OX  379 

Sound,  early  in  September.  Our  dogs  were  gone.  Our 
ammunition,  except  four  cartridges  which  I  had 
secreted  for  use  in  a  last  emergency,  was  gone.  Our 
equipment  consisted  of  a  half  sledge,  a  canvas  boat,  a 
torn  silk  tent,  a  few  camp  kettles,  tin  plates,  knives,  and 
matches.  Our  clothing  was  splitting  to  shreds. 

Cape  Sparbo,  with  its  huge  walls  of  granite,  was  to 
the  leeward.  A  little  bay  was  noted  where  we  might 
gain  the  rocks  in  quiet  wrater.  Above  the  rocks  was  a 
small  green  patch  where  we  hoped  to  find  a  soft  resting 
place  for  the  boat,  so  that  we  might  place  our  furs  in  it 
and  secure  shelter  from  the  bitter  wind. 

When  we  landed  we  found  to  our  surprise  that  it 
was  the  site  of  an  old  Eskimo  village.  There  was  a  line 
of  old  igloos  partly  below  water,  indicating  a  very  an- 
cient time  of  settlement,  for  since  the  departure  of  the 
builders  of  these  igloos  the  coast  must  have  settled  at 
least  fifteen  feet.  Above  were  a  few  other  ruins. 

Shortly  after  arriving  we  sought  an  auspicious 
place,  protected  from  the  wind  and  cold,  where  later  we 
might  build  a  winter  shelter.  Our  search  disclosed  a 
cave-like  hole,  part  of  which  was  dug  from  the  earth, 
and  over  which,  with  stones  and  bones,  had  been  con- 
structed a  roof  which  now  was  fallen  in. 

The  long  winter  was  approaching.  We  were  over 
three  hundred  miles  from  Annoatok,  and  the  coming 
of  the  long  night  made  it  necessary  for  us  to  halt  here. 
We  must  have  food  and  clothing.  We  now  came  upon 
musk  oxen  and  tried  to  fell  them  with  boulders,  and  bows 
and  arrows  made  of  the  hickory  of  our  sledge.  Day  after 
day  the  pursuit  was  vainly  followed.  Had  it  not  been 
for  occasional  ducks  caught  with  looped  lines  and  sling 


380  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

shots,  we  should  have  been  absolutely  without  any  food. 

By  the  middle  of  September,  snow  and  frost  came 
with  such  frequency  that  we  omitted  hunting  for  a  day 
to  dig  out  the  ruins  in  the  cave  and  cut  sod  before  perma- 
nent frost  made  such  work  impossible.  Bone  imple- 
ments were  shaped  from  skeletons  found  on  shore  for 
the  digging.  Blown  drifts  of  sand  and  gravel,  with  some 
moss  and  grass,  were  slowly  removed  from  the  pit.  We 
found  under  this,  to  our  great  joy,  just  the  under- 
ground arrangement  which  we  desired;  a  raised  plat- 
form, about  six  feet  long  and  eight  feet  wide  with  suit- 
able wings  for  the  lamp,  and  footspace,  lay  ready  for 
us.  The  pit  had  evidently  been  designed  for  a  small 
family.  The  walls,  which  were  about  two  feet  high, 
required  little  alteration.  Another  foot  was  added, 
which  leveled  the  structure  with  the  ground.  A  good 
deal  of  sod  was  cut  and  allowed  to  dry  in  the  sun  for 
use  as  a  roof. 

While  engaged  in  taking  out  the  stones  and  clean- 
ing the  dungeon-like  excavation,  I  suddenly  experienced 
a  heart-depressing  chill  when,  lifting  some  debris,  I  saw 
staring  at  me  from  the  black  earth  a  hollow-eyed  human 
skull.  The  message  of  death  which  the  weird  thing 
leeringly  conveyed  was  singularly  unpleasant ;  the  omen 
was  not  good.  Yet  the  fact  that  at  this  forsaken  spot 
human  hands  had  once  built  shelter,  or  for  this  thing  had 
constructed  a  grave,  gave  me  a  certain  companionable 
thrill. 

On  the  shore  not  far  away  we  secured  additional 
whale  ribs  and  with  these  made  a  framework  for  a  roof. 
This  was  later  constructed  of  moss  and  blocks  of  sod. 
We  built  a  rock  wall  about  the  shelter  to  protect  our- 


BULL  FIGHTS  WITH  THE  MUSK  OX  381 

selves  from  storms  and  bears.  Then  our  winter  home 
was  ready.  ,  Food  was  now  an  immediate  necessity. 
Game  was  found  around  us  in  abundance.  Most  of  it 
was  large.  On  land  there  were  bear  and  musk  ox,  in 
the  sea  the  walrus  and  the  whale.  But  what  could  we 
do  without  either  dogs  or  rifles? 

The  first  weapon  that  we  now  devised  was  the  bow 
and  arrow,  for  with  this  we  could  at  least  secure  some 
small  game.  We  had  in  our  sledge  available  hickory 
wood  of  the  best  quality,  than  which  no  wood  could  be 
better;  we  had  sinews  and  seal  lashings  for  strings,  but 
there  was  no  metal  for  tips.  We  tried  bone,  horn  and 
ivory,  but  all  proved  ineffective. 

One  day,  however,  E-tuk-i-shook  examined  his 
pocket  knife  and  suggested  taking  the  side  blades  for 
arrow  tips.  This  was  done,  and  the  blade  with  its  spring 
was  set  in  a  bone  handle.  Two  arrows  were  thus  tipped. 
The  weapons  complete,  the  Eskimo  boys  went  out  on 
the  chase.  They  returned  in  the  course  of  a  few  hours 
with  a  hare  and  an  eider-duck.  Joy  reigned  in  camp  as 
we  divided  the  meat  and  disposed  of  it  without  the 
process  of  cooking. 

A  day  later,  two  musk  oxen  were  seen  grazing 
along  the  moraine  of  a  wasting  glacier.  Now  the  musk 
ox  is  a  peace-loving  animal  and  avoids  strife,  but  when 
forced  into  fight  it  is  one  of  the  most  desperate  and 
dangerous  of  all  the  fighters  of  the  wilderness.  It  can 
and  does  give  the  most  fatal  thrust  of  all  the  horned 
animals.  No  Spanish  bull  of  the  pampas,  no  buffalo 
of  the  plains,  has  either  the  slant  of  horn  or  the  intelli- 
gence to  gore  its  enemies  as  has  this  inoffensive-looking 
bull  of  the  ice  world.  The  intelligence,  indeed,  is  an 


382  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

important  factor,  for  after  watching  musk  oxen  for  a 
time  under  varied  conditions,  one  comes  to  admire  their 
almost  human  intellect  as  well  as  their  superhuman 
power  of  delivering  self-made  force. 

Our  only  means  of  attack  was  with  the  bow  and 
arrow.  The  boys  crept  up  behind  rocks  until  within  a 
few  yards  of  the  unsuspecting  creatures.  They  bent 
the  bows,  and  the  arrows  sped  with  the  force  and 
accuracy  as  only  a  hungry  savage  can  master.  But  the 
beasts'  pelts  were  too  strong.  The  musk  oxen  jumped 
and  faced  their  assailants.  Each  arrow,  as  it  came,  was 
broken  into  splints  by  the  feet  and  the  teeth. 

When  the  arrows  were  all  used  a  still  more  primi- 
tive weapon  was  tried,  for  the  sling  shot  was  brought 
into  use,  with  large  stones.  These  missiles  the  musk 
oxen  took  good  naturedly,  merely  advancing  a  few  steps 
to  a  granite  boulder,  upon  which  they  sharpened  their 
horn  points  and  awaited  further  developments.  No 
serious  injury  had  been  inflicted  and  they  made  no 
effort  to  escape. 

Then  came  a  change.  When  we  started  to  give  up 
the  chase  they  turned  upon  us  with  a  fierce  rush.  Fortu- 
nately, many  big  boulders  were  about,  and  we  dodged 
around  these  with  large  stones  in  hand  to  deliver  at  close 
range.  In  a  wild  rush  a  musk  ox  cannot  easily  turn,  and 
so  can  readily  be  dodged.  Among  the  rocks  two  legs 
were  better  than  four.  The  trick  of  evading  the  musk 
ox  I  had  learned  from  the  dogs.  It  saved  our  lives. 

After  a  while  the  animals  wearied,  and  we  beat  a 
hasty  retreat,  with  new  lessons  in  our  book  of  hunting 
adventures.  The  bow  and  arrow  was  evidently  not  the 
weapon  with  which  to  secure  musk  oxen. 


BULL  FIGHTS  WITH  THE  MUSK  OX 

The  musk  ox  of  Jones  Sound,  unlike  his  brother 
farther  north,  is  every  ready  for  battle.  He  is  often 
compelled  to  meet  the  bear  and  the  wolf  in  vicious  con- 
tests, and  his  tactics  are  as  thoroughly  developed  as  his 
emergencies  require.  Seldom  does  he  fall  the  victim  of 
his  enemies.  We  were  a  long  time  in  learning  com- 
pletely his  methods  of  warfare,  and  if,  in  the  meantime, 
we  had  not  secured  other  game  our  fate  would  have  been 
unfortunate. 

Harpoons  and  lances  were  next  finally  completed, 
and  with  them  we  hastened  to  retrieve  our  honor  in  the 
"ah-ming-ma"  chase.  For,  after  all,  the  musk  ox  alone 
could  supply  our  wants.  Winter  storms  were  coming 
fast.  We  were  not  only  without  food  and  fuel,  but  with- 
out clothing.  In  our  desperate  effort  to  get  out  of  the 
regions  of  famine  to  the  Atlantic,  we  had  left  behind 
all  our  winter  furs,  including  the  sleeping  bags ;  and  our 
summer  garments  were  worn  out.  We  required  the  fuel 
and  the  sinew,  the  fat  and  the  horn. 

One  day  we  saw  a  herd  of  twenty-one  musk  oxen 
quietly  grazing  on  a  misty  meadow,  like  cattle  on  the 
western  plains.  It  was  a  beautiful  sight  to  watch  them, 
divided  as  they  were  into  families  and  in  small  groups. 
The  males  were  in  fur  slightly  brown,  while  the  females 
and  the  young  ones  were  arrayed  in  magnificent  black 
pelts. 

To  get  any  of  them  seemed  hopeless,  but  our  ap- 
palling necessities  forced  us  onward.  There  were  no 
boulders  near,  but  each  of  us  gathered  an  armful  of 
stones,  the  object  being  to  make  a  sudden  bombardment 
and  compel  them  to  retreat  in  disorder  and  scatter 
among  the  rocks. 


384  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

We  approached  under  cover  of  a  small  grassy 
hummock.  When  we  were  detected,  a  bull  gave  a  loud 
snort  and  rushed  toward  his  nearest  companions,  where- 
upon the  entire  herd  gathered  into  a  circle,  with  the 
young  in  the  center. 

We  made  our  sham  rush  and  hurled  the  stones. 
The  oxen  remained  almost  motionless,  with  their  heads 
down,  giving  little  snorts  and  stamping  a  little  when 
hit,  but  quickly  resuming  their  immobile  position  of 
watchfulness.  After  our  stones  were  exhausted,  the 
animals  began  to  shift  positions  slightly.  We  inter- 
preted this  as  a  move  for  action.  So  we  gave  up  the 
effort  and  withdrew. 

The  days  were  long  and  the  nights  still  light 
enough  to  continue  operations  as  long  as  we  could  keep 
our  eyes  open.  The  whip  of  hunger  made  rest  impos- 
sible. So  we  determined  to  seek  a  less  formidable  group 
of  oxen  in  a  position  more  favorable.  The  search  was 
continued  until  the  sinking  glimmer  of  the  sun  in  the 
north  marked  the  time  of  midnight — for  with  us  at  that 
time  the  compass  was  the  timepiece. 

When  E-tuk-i-shook  secured  a  here  with  the  bow 
and  arrow,  we  ascended  a  rocky  eminence  and  sat  down 
to  appease  the  calling  stomach  without  a  camp  fire. 
From  here  we  detected  a  family  of  four  musk  oxen 
asleep  not  far  from  another  group  of  rocks. 

This  was  a  call  to  battle.  -We  were  not  long  in 
planning  our  tactics.  The  wind  was  in  our  favor,  per- 
mitting an  attack  from  the  side  opposite  the  rocks  to 
which  we  aimed  to  force  a  retreat.  We  also  found  small 
stones  in  abundance,  these  being  now  a  necessary  part  of 
our  armament.  Our  first  effort  was  based  on  the  suppo- 


BULL  FIGHTS  WITH  THE  MUSK  OX  385 

sition  of  their  remaining  asleep.  They  were  simply  chew- 
ing their  cud,  however,  and  rose  to  form  a  ring  of  de- 
fence as  we  advanced.  We  stormed  them  with  stones 
and  they  took  to  the  shelter  of  the  rocks.  We  continued 
to  advance  slowly  upon  them,  throwing  stones  occasion- 
ally to  obviate  a  possible  assault  from  them  before  we 
could  also  seek  the  shelter  of  the  rocks. 

Besides  the  bow  and  arrow  and  the  stones,  we  now 
had  lances  and  these  we  threw  as  they  rushed  to  attack 
us.  Two  lances  were  crushed  to  small  fragments  be- 
fore they  could  be  withdrawn  by  the  light  line  attached. 
They  inflicted  wounds,  but  not  severe  ones. 

Noting  the  immense  strength  of  the  animals,  we  at 
first  thought  it  imprudent  to  risk  the  harpoon  with  its 
precious  line,  for  if  we  lost  it  we  could  not  replace  it. 
But  the  destruction  of  the  two  lances  left  us  no  alterna- 
tive. 

Ah-we-lah  threw  the  harpoon.  It  hit  a  rib,  glanced 
to  a  rock,  and  was  also  destroyed.  Fortunately  we  had 
a  duplicate  point,  which  was  quickly  fastened.  Then 
we  moved  about  to  encourage  another  onslaught. 

Two  came  at  once,  an  old  bull  and  a  young  one. 
E-tuk-i-shook  threw  the  harpoon  at  the  young  one,  and 
it  entered.  The  line  had  previously  been  fastened  to  a 
rock,  and  the  animal  ran  back  to  its  associates,  appar- 
ently not  severely  hurt,  leaving  the  line  slack.  One  of 
the  others  immediately  attacked  the  line  with  horns, 
hoofs  and  teeth,  but  did  not  succeed  in  breaking  it. 

Our  problem  now  was  to  get  rid  of  the  other  three 
while  we  dealt  with  the  one  at  the  end  of  the  line.  Our 
only  resource  was  a  sudden  fusilade  of  stones.  This 
proved  effective.  The  three  scattered  and  ascended  the 


386  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

boulder-strewn  foreland  of  a  cliff,  where  the  oldest  bull 
remained  to  watch  our  movements.  The  young  bull 
made  violent  efforts  to  escape  but  the  line  of  sealskin 
was  strong  and  elastic.  A  lucky  throw  of  a  lance  at 
close  range  ended  the  strife.  Then  we  advanced  on  the 
old  bull,  who  was  alone  in  a  good  position  for  us. 

We  gathered  stones  and  advanced,  throwing  them 
at  the  creature's  body.  This,  we  found,  did  not  enrage 
him,  but  it  prevented  his  making  an  attack.  As  we 
gained  ground  he  gradually  backed  up  to  the  edge  of 
the  cliff,  snorting  viciously  but  making  no  effort  what- 
ever either  to  escape  along  a  lateral  bench  or  to  attack. 
His  big  brown  eyes  were  upon  us;  his  sharp  horns  were 
pointed  at  us.  He  evidently  was  planning  a  desperate 
lunge  and  was  backing  to  gain  time  and  room,  but  each 
of  us  kept  within  a  few  yards  of  a  good-sized  rock. 

Suddenly  we  made  a  combined  rush  into  the  open, 
hurling  stones,  and  keeping  a  long  rock  in  a  line  for 
retreat.  Our  storming  of  stones  had  the  desired  effect. 
The  bull,  annoyed  and  losing  its  presence  of  mind, 
stepped  impatiently  one  step  too  far  backwards  and  fell 
suddenly  over  the  cliff,  landing  on  a  rocky  ledge  below. 
Looking  over  we  saw  he  had  broken  a  fore  leg.  The  cliff 
was  not  more  than  fifteen  feet  high.  From  it  the  lance 
was  used  to  put  the  poor  creature  out  of  suffering.  We 
were  rich  now  and  could  afford  to  spread  out  our 
stomachs,  contracted  by  long  spells  of  famine.  The  bull 
dressed  about  three  hundred  pounds  of  meat  and  one 
hundred  pounds  of  tallow. 

We  took  the  tallow  and  as  much  meat  as  we  could 
carry  on  our  backs,  and  started  for  the  position  of  our 
prospective  winter  camp,  ten  miles  away.  The  meat 


BULL  FIGHTS  WITH  THE  MUSK  OX  387 

left  was  carefully  covered  with  heavy  stones  to  protect 
it  from  bears,  wolves  and  foxes.  On  the  following  day 
we  returned  with  the  canvas  boat,  making  a  landing 
about  four  miles  from  the  battlefield.  As  we  neared 
the  caches  we  found  to  our  dismay  numerous  bear  and 
fox  tracks.  The  bears  had  opened  the  caches  and  re- 
moved our  hard-earned  game,  while  the  foxes  and  the 
ravens  had  cleared  up  the  very  fragments  and  de- 
stroyed even  the  skins.  Here  was  cause  for  vengeance 
on  the  bear  and  the  fox.  The  fox  paid  his  skin  later, 
but  the  bear  out-generaled  us  in  nearly  every 
maneuvre. 

We  came  prepared  to  continue  the  chase  but  had 
abandoned  the  use  of  the  harpoon.  Our  main  hope  for 
fuel  was  the  blubber  of  the  walrus,  and  if  the  harpoon 
should  be  destroyed  or  lost  we  could  not  hope  to  attack 
so  powerful  a  brute  as  a  walrus  with  any  other  device. 
In  landing  we  had  seen  a  small  herd  of  musk  oxen  at 
some  distance  to  the  east,  but  they  got  our  wind  and 
vanished.  We  decided  to  follow  them  up.  One  day 
we  found  them  among  a  series  of  rolling  hills,  where  the 
receding  glaciers  had  left  many  erratic  boulders.  They 
lined  up  in  their  ring  of  defence  as  usual  when  we  were 
detected.  There  were  seven  of  them ;  all  large  creatures 
with  huge  horns.  A  bitter  wind  was  blowing,  driving 
some  snow,  which  made  our  task  more  difficult. 

The  opening  of  the  fight  with  stones  was  now  a 
regular  feature  which  we  never  abandoned  in  our  later 
development  of  the  art,  but  the  manner  in  which  we  de- 
livered the  stones  depended  upon  the  effect  which  we 
wished  to  produce.  If  we  wished  the  musk  oxen  to  re- 
treat, we  would  make  a  combined  rush,  hurling  the 


388  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

stones  at  the  herd.  If  we  wished  them  to  remain  in  po- 
sition and  discourage  their  attack,  we  advanced  slowly 
and  threw  stones  desultorily,  more  or  less  at  random. 
If  we  wanted  to  encourage  attacks,  one  man  advanced 
and  delivered  a  large  rock  as  best  he  could  at  the  head. 
This  was  cheap  ammunition  and  it  was  very  effective. 

In  this  case  the  game  was  in  a  good  position  for 
us  and  we  advanced  accordingly.  They  allowed  us  to 
take  positions  within  about  fifteen  feet,  but  no  nearer. 
The  lances  were  repeatedly  tried  without  effect,  and 
after  a  while  two  of  these  were  again  broken. 

Having  tried  bow  and  arrow,  stones,  the  lance  and 
the  harpoon,  we  now  tried  another  weapon.  We  threw 
the  lasso — but  not  successfully,  owing  to  the  bushy  hair 
about  the  head  and  the  roundness  of  the  hump  of  the 
neck.  Then  we  tried  to  entangle  their  feet  with  slip 
loops  just  as  we  trapped  gulls.  This  also  failed.  We 
next  extended  the  loop  idea  to  the  horns.  The  bull's 
habit  of  rushing  at  things  hurled  at  him  caused  us  to 
think  of  this  plan. 

A  large  slip  loop  was  now  made  in  the  center  of 
the  line,  and  the  two  natives  took  up  positions  on  oppo- 
site sides  of  the  animal.  They  threw  the  rope,  with  its 
loop,  on  the  ground  in  front  of  the  creature,  while  I 
encouraged  an  attack  from  the  front.  As  the  head  was 
slightly  elevated  the  loop  was  raised,  and  the  bull  put 
his  horns  in  it,  one  after  the  other.  The  rope  was  now 
rapidly  fastened  to  stones  and  the  bull  tightened  the 
loop  by  his  efforts  to  advance  or  retreat.  With  every 
opportunity  the  slack  was  taken  up,  until  no  play  was 
allowed  the  animal.  During  this  struggle  all  the  other 
oxen  retreated  except  one  female,  and  she  was  in- 


BULL  FIGHTS  WITH  THE  MUSK  OX  389 

offensive.  A  few  stones  at  close  range  drove  her  off. 
Then  we  had  the  bull  where  we  could  reach  him  with  the 
lance  at  arm's  length,  and  plunge  it  into  his  vitals.  He 
soon  fell  over,  the  first  yictim  to  our  new  art  of  musk 
ox  capture. 

The  others  did  not  run  very  far  away.  Indeed, 
they  were  too  fat  to  run,  and  two  more  were  soon 
secured  in  the  same  way.  This  time  we  took  all  the  meat 
we  could  with  us  to  camp  and  left  a  man  on  guard. 
When  all  was  removed  to  the  bay  we  found  the  load  too 
heavy  for  our  boat,  so,  in  two  loads,  we  transported  the 
meat  and  fat  and  skins  to  our  camp,  where  we  built 
caches  which  we  believed  impregnable  to  the  bear, 
although  the  thieving  creatures  actually  opened  them 
later. 

Our  lances  repaired,  we  started  out  for  another  ad- 
venture a  few  days  later.  It  was  a  beautiful  day.  Our 
methods  of  attack  were  not  efficient,  but  we  wished  to 
avoid  the  risk  of  the  last  plunge  of  the  lance,  for  our 
lives  were  in  the  balance  every  time  if  the  line  should 
break,  and  with  every  lunge  of  the  animal  we  expected 
it  to  snap.  In  such  case,  we  knew,  the  assailant  would 
surely  be  gored. 

We  were  sufficiently  independent  now  to  proceed 
more  cautiously.  With  the  bull's  willingness  to  put  his 
head  into  the  loop,  I  asked  myself  whether  the  line  loop 
could  not  be  slipped  beyond  the  horns  and  about  the 
neck,  thus  shutting  off  the  air.  So  the  line  was  length- 
ened with  this  effort  in  view. 

Of  the  many  groups  of  oxen  which  we  saw  we 
picked  those  in  the  positions  most  to  our  advantage, 
although  rather  distant.  Our  new  plan  was  tried  with 


390  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

success  on  a  female.  A  bull  horned  her  vigorously 
when  she  gasped  for  breath,  and  which  aided  our 
efforts.  A  storming  of  stones  scattered  the  others  of 
the  group,  and  we  were  left  to  deal  with  our  catch 
with  the  knife. 

Our  art  of  musk  ox  fighting  was  now  completely 
developed.  In  the  course  of  a  few  weeks  we  secured 
enough  to  assure  comfort  and  ease  during  the  long 
night.  By  our  own  efforts  we  were  lifted  suddenly 
from  famine  to  luxury.  But  it  had  been  the  stomach 
with  its  chronic  emptiness  which  had  lashed  the  mind  and 
body  to  desperate  efforts  with  sufficient  courage  to  face 
the  danger.  Hunger,  as  I  have  found,  is  more  potent 
as  a  stimulant  than  barrels  of  whiskey.  Beginning  with 
the  bow  and  arrow  we  had  tried  everything  which  we 
could  devise,  but  now  our  most  important  acquisition 
was  our  intimate  knowledge  of  the  animal's  own  means 
of  offense  and  defense. 

We  knew  by  a  kind  of  instinct  when  an  attack 
upon  us  was  about  to  be  made,  because  the  animal  made 
a  forward  move,  and  we  never  failed  in  our  efforts  to 
force  a  retreat.  The  rocks  which  the  animals  sought  for 
an  easy  defense  were  equally  useful  to  us,  and  later  we 
forced  them  into  deep  waters  and  also  deep  snow  with 
similar  success.  By  the  use  of  stones  and  utilizing  the 
creatures'  own  tactics  we  placed  them  where  we  wished. 
And  then  again,  by  the  animal's  own  efforts,  we  forced 
it  to  strangle  itself,  which,  after  all,  was  the  most 
humane  method  of  slaughter.  Three  human  lives  were 
thus  saved  by  the  invention  of  a  new  art  of  chase. 
This  gave  us  courage  to  attack  those  more  vicious  but 
less  dangerous  animals,  the  bear  and  walrus. 


BULL  FIGHTS  WITH  THE  MUSK  OX  391 

The  musk  ox  now  supplied  many  wants  in  our 
"Robinson  Crusoe"  life.  From  the  bone  we  made  har- 
poon points,  arrow  pieces,  knife  handles,  fox  traps  and 
sledge  repairs.  The  skin,  with  its  remarkable  fur,  made 
our  bed  and  roofed  our  igloo.  Of  it  we  made  all  kinds 
of  garments,  but  its  greatest  use  was  for  coats  with 
hoods,  stockings  and  mittens.  From  the  skin,  with  the 
fur  removed,  we  made  boots,  patched  punctures  in  our 
boat,  and  cut  lashings.  The  hair  and  wool  which  were 
removed  from  the  skins  made  pads  for  our  palms  in  the 
mittens  and  cushions  for  the  soles  of  our  feet  in  lieu  of 
the  grass  formerly  used. 

The  meat  became  our  staple  food  for  seven  months 
without  change.  It  was  a  delicious  product.  It  has  a 
flavor  slightly  sweet,  like  that  of  horseflesh,  but  still 
distinctly  pleasing.  It  possesses  an  odor  unlike  musk 
but  equally  unlike  anything  that  I  know  of.  The  live 
creatures  exhale  the  scent  of  domestic  cattle.  Just  why 
this  odd  creature  is  called  "musk"  ox  is  a  mystery,  for 
it  is  neither  an  ox,  nor  does  it  smell  of  musk.  The 
Eskimo  name  of  "ah-ming-ma"  would  fit  it  much  better. 
The  bones  were  used  as  fuel  for  outside  fires,  and  the 
fat  as  both  fuel  and  food. 

At  first  our  wealth  of  food  came  with  surprise  and 
delight  to  us,  for,  in  the  absence  of  sweet  or  starchy 
foods,  man  craves  fat.  Sugar  and  starch  are  most 
readily  converted  into  fat  by  the  animal  laboratory,  and 
fat  is  one  of  the  prime  factors  in  the  development  and 
maintenance  of  the  human  system.  It  is  the  confec- 
tionery of  aboriginal  man,  and  we  had  taken  up  the  lot 
of  the  most  primitive  aborigines,  living  and  thriving 
solely  on  the  product  of  the  chase  without  a  morsel  of 


392 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 


civilized  or  vegetable  food.  Under  these  circumstances 
we  especially  delighted  in  the  musk  ox  tallow,  and  more 
especially  in  the  marrow,  which  we  sucked  from  the 
bone  with  the  eagerness  with  which  a  child  jubilantly 
manages  a  stick  of  candy. 


ARCTIC    WOLF 


WITH  A  NEW  ART  OF  CHASE  IN  A  NEW 
WORLD  OF  LIFE 

THREE  WEEKS  BEFORE  THE  SUNSET  OF  1908 — REVELLING 

IN  AN  EDEN  OF  GAME PECULIARITIES  OF  ANIMALS 

OF    THE    ARCTIC HOW    NATURE    DICTATES    ANIMAL 

COLOR THE  QUEST  OF  SMALL  LIFE 

XXVII 

COMING  OF  THE  SECOND  WINTER 

In  two  months,  from  the  first  of  September  to  the 
end  of  October,  we  passed  from  a  period  of  hunger, 
thirst  and  abject  misery  into  the  realm  of  abundant 
game.  The  spell  for  inactivity  had  not  yet  come.  Up 
to  this  time  we  were  too  busy  with  the  serious  business 
of  life  to  realize  thoroughly  that  we  had  really  discovered 
a  new  natural  wonderland.  The  luck  of  Robinson 
Crusoe  was  not  more  fortunate  than  ours,  although  he 
had  not  the  cut  of  frost  nor  the  long  night,  nor  the 
torment  of  bears  to  circumscribe  his  adventures.  In 
successive  stages  of  battle  our  eyes  had  opened  to  a  new 
world  of  life. 

In  searching  every  nook  and  cranny  of  land  we  had 
acquired  new  arts  of  life  and  a  new  perspective  of 
nature's  wonders.  We  slept  in  caves  in  storm;  in 
the  lee  of  icebergs  in  strong  winds  and  on  the  mossy 
cushions  of  earth  concavities.  Here  we  learned  to  study 


394  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

and  appreciate  primal  factors  of  both  animal  and  plant 
life. 

In  the  Arctic,  nature  tries  to  cover  its  nakedness  in 
places  where  the  cruel  winds  do  not  cut  its  contour. 
The  effort  is  interesting,  not  only  because  of  the  charm 
of  the  verdant  dress,  but  because  of  the  evidence  of  a 
motherly  protection  to  the  little  life  cells  which  struggle 
against  awful  odds  to  weave  that  fabric  wherever  a 
terrestrial  dimple  is  exposed  to  the  kisses  of  the  south- 
ern sun.  In  these  depressions,  sheltered  from  the. 
blasts  of  storms,  a  kindly  hand  spreads  a  beautiful 
mantle  of  colorful  grass,  moss,  lichens  and  flowery 
plants. 

Here  the  lemming  digs  his  home  under  the  velvet 
cover,  where  he  may  enjoy  the  roots  and  material  pro- 
tection from  the  abysmal  frost  of  the  long  night.  Here 
in  the  protected  folds  of  Mother  Earth,  blanketed  by  the 
warm  white  robe  of  winter,  he  sleeps  the  peace  of  death 
while  the  warring  elements  blast  in  fury  outside. 

Here  the  Arctic  hare  plays  with  its  bunnies  during 
summer,  and  as  the  winter  comes  the  young  grow  to 
full  maturity  and  dress  in  a  silky  down  of  white.  Under 
the  snow  they  burrow,  making  long  tunnels,  still  eating 
and  sleeping  on  their  loved  cushions  of  frozen  plants, 
far  under  the  snow-skirts  of  Mother  Earth,  while  the 
life-stilling  blasts  without  expend  their  wintry  force. 

Here  the  ptarmigan  scratches  for  its  food.  The 
musk  ox  and  the  caribou  browse,  while  the  raven,  with  a 
kind  wor,d  for  all,  collects  food  for  its  palate.  The  bear 
and  the  wolf  occasionally  visit  to  collect  tribute,  while 
the  falcon  and  the  fox  with  one  eye  open  are  ever  on 
the  alert  for  the  exercise  of  their  craft. 


NEW  ART  OF  CHASE  395 

In  these  little  smiling  indentations  of  nature,  when 
the  sun  begins  to  caress  the  gentle  slopes,  while  the  snow 
melts  and  flows  in  leaping  streams — the  sea  still  locked 
by  the  iron  grip  of  the  winter  embrace — the  Arctic  in- 
cubator works  overtime  to  start  the  little  ones  of  the 
snow  wilds.  Thus  in  these  dimples  of  nature  rocks  the 
cradle  of  boreal  life. 

Relieved  of  the  all-absorbing*  care  of  providing 
food,  I  now  was  often  held  spellbound  as  I  wandered 
over  these  spots  of  nature's  wonders.  Phases  of  life 
which  never  interested  me  before  now  riveted  my  atten- 
tion. Wandering  from  the  softly  cushioned  gullies,  the 
harsh  ridge  life  next  came  under  my  eyes.  While  the 
valleys  and  the  gullies  become  garden  spots  of  summer 
glory,  the  very  protection  from  winds  which  makes  this 
life  possible  buries  the  vegetable  luxuriousness  in  winter 
under  unfathomable  depths  of  snow.  The  musk  ox  and 
the  caribou,  dependent  upon  this  plant  life  for  food, 
therefore  become  deprived  of  the  usual  means  of  sub- 
sistence. But  Mother  Nature  does  not  desert  her 
children.  The  same  winds  which  compel  man  and 
feebler  animals  to  seek  shelter  from  its  death-dealing 
assault,  afford  food  to  the  better  fitted  musk  ox  and 
caribou.  In  summer,  plants,  like  animals,  climb  to 
ridges,  hummocks  and  mountain  slopes,  to  get  air  and 
light  and  warm  sunbeams.  But  the  battle  here  is  hard, 
and  only  very  strong  plants  survive  the  force  of  wind 
and  frosts. 

The  plant  fibre  here  become  tenacious ;  with  a  body 
gnarled  and  knotty  from  long  conflict  the  roots  dig 
yards  deep  into  the  soil.  This  leaves  the  breathing  part 
of  the  plant  dwarfed  to  a  few  inches.  Here  the  winter 


396  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE     , 

winds  sweep  off  the  snow  and  offer  food  to  the  musk  ox 
and  caribou.  Thus  the  wind,  which  destroys,  also  gives 
means  of  life.  The  equalizing  balance  of  nature  is  truly 
wonderful. 

In  small,  circumscribed  areas  we  thus  found  our- 
selves in  a  new  Eden  of  primeval  life. 

The  topography  of  North  Devon,  however,  placed 
a  sharp  limit  to  the  animated  wilderness.  Only  a  nar- 
row strip  of  coast  about  Cape  Sparbo,  extending  about 
twenty-five  miles  to  the  east  and  about  forty  miles  to 
the  west,  presented  any  signs  of  land  life.  All  other 
parts  of  the  south  shore  of  Jones  Sound  are  more  bar- 
ren than  the  shores  of  the  Polar  sea. 

Although  our  larder  was  now  well  stocked  with 
meat  for  food  and  blubber  for  fuel,  we  were  still  in  need 
of  furs  and  skins  to  prepare  a  new  equipment  with 
which  to  return  to  the  Greenland  shores.  The  animals 
whose  pelts  we  required  were  abundant  everywhere. 
But  they  were  too  active  to  be  caught  by  the  art  and 
the  weapons  evolved  earlier  in  the  chase  of  the  walrus, 
bear  and  musk  ox. 

A  series  of  efforts,  therefore,  was  directed  to  the 
fox,  the  hare,  the  ptarmigan  and  the  seal.  It  was  neces- 
sary to  devise  special  methods  and  means  of  capture 
for  each  family  of  animals.  The  hare  was  perhaps  the 
most  important,  not  only  because  its  delicately  flavored 
meat  furnished  a  pleasing  change  from  the  steady  diet 
of  musk  ox,  but  also  because  its  skin  is  not  equalled  by 
any  other  for  stockings.  In  our  quest  of  the  musk  ox 
we  had  startled  little  groups  of  creatures  from  many 
centers.  Their  winter  fur  was  not  prime  until  after  the 
middle  of  October.  Taking  notes  of  their  haunts  and 


E-TUK-I-SIIOOK    WAITING    FOU    A    SEAL   AT   A    BLOW-HOLE 


TOWARD   CAPE   SPARBO   IN  A   CANVAS   BOAT 

WALRUS— PRIZE    OF  A   FIFTEEN   HOUR   BATTLE— 4,000  POUNDS    OF 
MEAT  AND   FAT 


NEW  ART  OF  CHASE  397 

their  habits,  we  had,  therefore,  reserved  the  hare  hunt 
until  the  days  just  before  sunset. 

We  had  learned  to  admire  this  little  aristocrat.  It 
is  the  most  beautiful,  most  delicate  of  northern  crea- 
tures. Early  in  the  summer  we  had  found  it  grazing 
in  the  green  meadows  along  the  base  of  bird  cliffs.  The 
little  gray  bunnies  then  played  with  their  mothers  about 
crystal  dens.  Now  the  babes  were  full  grown  and 
clothed  in  the  same  immaculate  white  of  the  parents. 
We  could  distinguish  the  young  only  by  their  greater 
activity  and  their  ceaseless  curiosity. 

In  the  immediate  vicinity  of  camp  we  found  them 
first  in  gullies  where  the  previous  winter's  snow  had  but 
recently  disappeared.  Here  the  grass  was  young  and 
tender  and  of  a  flavor  to  suit  their  taste  for  delicacies. 
A  little  later  they  followed  the  musk  ox  to  the  shores  of 
lagoons  or  to  the  wind-swept  hills.  Still  later,  as  the 
winter  snows  blanketed  the  pastures  and  the  bitter 
storms  of  night  swept  the  cheerless  drifts,  they  dug 
long  tunnels  under  the  snow  for  food,  and  when  the 
storms  were  too  severe  remained  housed  in  these  feeding 
dugouts. 

An  animal  of  rare  intelligence,  the  hare  is  quick  to 
grasp  an  advantage,  and  therefore  as  winter  advances 
we  find  it  a  constant  companion  of  the  musk  ox.  For  in 
the  diggings  of  the  musk  ox  this  little  creature  finds 
sufficient  food  uncovered  for  its  needs. 

With  a  skeleton  as  light  as  that  of  the  bird  and  a 
skin  as  frail  as  paper  it  is  nevertheless  as  well  prepared 
to  withstand  the  rigors  of  the  Arctic  as  the  bear  with 
its  clumsy  anatomy.  The  entire  makeup  of  the  hare  is 
based  upon  the  highest  strain  of  animal  economy.  It 


398  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

expends  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  energy  at  the 
cost  of  the  least  consumption  of  food.  Its  fur  is  as 
white  as  the  boreal  snows  and  absorbs  color  somewhat 
more  readily.  In  a  stream  of  crimson  light  it  appears 
red  and  white;  in  a  shadow  of  ice  or  in  the  darkness  of 
night  it  assumes  the  subdued  blue  of  the  Polar  world. 
]\Tature  has  bleached  its  fur  seemingly  to  afford  the  best 
protection  against  the  frigid  chill,  for  a  suitable  white 
fur  permits  the  escape  of  less  bodily  heat  than  any 
colored  or  shaded  pelt. 

The  fox  is  its  only  real  enemy,  and  the  fox's  chance 
of  success  is  won  only  by  superior  cunning.  Its  protec- 
tion against  the  fox  lies  in  its  lightning-like  movement 
of  the  legs.  When  it  scents  danger  it  rises  by  a  series 
of  darts  that  could  be  followed  only  by  birds.  Its  ex- 
penditure of  muscular  energy  is  so  economical  that  it 
can  continue  its  run  for  an  almost  indefinite  time. 
Shooting  along  a  few  hundred  paces,  it  then  rises  to  rest 
in  an  erect  posture.  With  its  black-tipped  ears  in  line 
with  its  back  it  makes  a  fascinating  little  bit  of  na- 
ture's handiwork.  Again,  when  asleep,  it  curls  up 
its  legs  carefully  in  the  long  fur  of  its  body,  and  its  ever- 
active  nose,  with  the  divided  lip,  is  then  pushed  into  the 
long  soft  fur  of  the  breast  where  the  frost  crystals  are 
screened  from  the  breath  when  storms  carry  drift  snow. 
It  is  a  fluffy  ball  of  animation  which  provokes  one's 
admiration. 

Deprived  as  we  were  of  most  of  the  usual  comforts 
of  life,  many  things  were  taught  us  by  the  creatures 
about.  From  the  hare,  with  its  scrupulous  attention  to 
cleanliness,  we  learned  how  to  cleanse  our  hands  and 
faces.  With  no  soap,  no  towels  and  very  little  water, 


NEW  ART  OF  CHASE  399 

we  had  some  difficulty  in  trying  to  keep  respectable 
appearances.  The  hare  has  the  same  problem  to  deal 
with,  but  it  is  provided  by  nature  with  a  cleansing  appa- 
ratus. Its  own  choice  is  the  forepaw,  but  with  its  need 
for  snow  shoes  the  hind  legs  serve  a  very  useful  purpose, 
and  then,  too,  the  surface  is  developed,  a  surface  covered 
with  tough  fur  which,  we  discovered,  possessed  the 
quality  of  a  wet  sponge  and  did  not  require,  for  effi- 
ciency, either  soap  or  water.  With  hare  paws,  therefore, 
we  kept  clean.  These  paws  also  served  as  napkins.  To 
take  the  place  of  a  basin  and  a  towel  we  therefore  gath- 
ered a  supply  of  hare  paws,  enough  to  keep  clean  for 
at  least  six  months. 

The  hare  was  a  good  mark  for  E-tuk-i-shook  with 
the  sling  shot,  and  many  fell  victims  to  his  primitive 
genius.  Ah-we-lah,  never  an  expert  at  stone  slinging, 
became  an  adept  with  the  bow  and  arrow.  Usually  he 
returned  with  at  least  a  hare  from  every  day's  chase. 
Our  main  success  resulted  from  a  still  more  primitive 
device.  Counting  on  its  inquisitiveness  we  devised  a 
chain  of  loop  lines  arranged  across  the  hare's  regular 
lines  of  travel.  In  playing  and  jumping  through  these 
loops,  the  animal  tightened  the  lines  and  became  our  vic- 
tim automatically. 

The  ptarmigan  chase  was  possible  only  for  Ah-we- 
lah.  The  bird  was  not  at  all  shy,  for  it  often  came  close 
to  our  den  and  scattered  the  snow  like  a  chicken.  It  was 
too  small  a  mark  for  the  sling  shot  and  only  Ah-we-lah 
could  give  the  arrow  the  precise  direction  for  these 
feathered  creatures.  Altogether,  fifteen  were  secured 
in  our  locality,  and  all  served  as  dessert  for  my  special 
benefit.  According  to  Eskimo  custom,  a  young,  un- 


400  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

married  man  or  woman  cannot  eat  the  ptarmigan,  or 
ffahr-rish-shah"  as  they  call  it.  That  pleasure  is  re- 
served for  the  older  people,  and  I  did  not  for  a  moment 
risk  the  sacrilege  of  trying  to  change  the  custom.  It 
was  greatly  to  my  advantage,  for  it  not  only  impressed 
with  suitable  force  my  dignity  as  a  superior  Eskimo, 
but  it  enabled  me  to  enjoy  an  entire  bird  at  a  time  in- 
stead of  only  a  teasing  mouthful. 

To  us  the  ptarmigan  was  at  all  times  fascinating, 
but  it  proved  ever  a  thing  of  mystery.  Descending  from 
the  skies  at  unexpected  times  it  embarks  again  for 
haunts  unknown.  At  times  we  saw  the  birds  in  great 
numbers.  At  other  times  they  were  absent  for  months. 
In  summer  the  bird  has  gray  and  brown  feathers, 
mingled  with  white.  It  keeps  close  to  the  inland  ice, 
making  its  course  along  the  snowy  coast  of  Noonataks, 
beyond  the  reach  of  man  or  fox.  Late  in  September  it 
seeks  the  lower  ground  along  the  sea  level. 

Like  the  hare  and  the  musk  ox,  it  delights  in  windy 
places  where  the  snow  has  been  driven  away.  There  it 
finds  bits  of  moss  and  withered  plants  which  satisfy  its 
needs.  The  summer  plumage  is  at  first  sight  like  that 
of  the  partridge.  On  close  examination  one  finds  the 
feathers  are  only  tipped  with  color — underneath,  the 
plumage  is  white.  In  winter  it  retains  only  the  black 
feathers  of  its  tail,  otherwise  it  is  as  white  as  the  hare. 
Its  legs  often  are  covered  with  tough  fur,  like  that  of 
the  hare's  lower  hind  legs.  The  meat  is  delicate  in 
flavor  and  tender.  It  is  the  most  beautiful  of  the  four 
birds  that  remain  in  the  white  world  when  all  is  bleak 
during  the  night. 

We  sought  the  fox  more  diligently  than  the  ptarmi- 


NEW  ART  OF  CHASE  401 

gan.  We  had  a  more  tangible  way  of  securing  it. 
Furthermore,  we  were  in  great  need  of  its  skin. 
E-tuk-i-shook  and  Ah-we-lah  regarded  fox  hams  as 
quite  a  delicacy — a  delicacy  which  I  never  willingly 
shared  when  there  were  musk  tenderloins  about.  We 
had  no  steel  traps,  and  with  its  usual  craft  the  fox  usu- 
ally managed  to  evade  our  crude  weapons  by  keeping 
out  of  sight.  Bone  traps  were  made  with  a  good  deal  of 
care  after  the  pattern  of  steel  traps.  We  used  a  musk-ox 
horn  as  a  spring.  But  with  these  we  were  only  partially 
successful.  As  a  last  resort,  little  domes  were  arranged 
in  imitation  of  the  usual  caches,  with  trap  stone  doors. 
In  these  we  managed  to  secure  fourteen  white  and  two 
blue  animals.  After  that  they  proved  too  wise  for  our 
craft. 

The  fox  becomes  shy  only  in  the  end  of  October, 
when  its  fur  begins  to  be  really  worth  taking.  Before 
that  it  followed  us  everywhere  on  the  musk  ox  quest,  for 
it  was  not  slow  to  learn  the  advantage  of  being  near  our 
battle  scenes.  We  frequently  left  choice  bits  for  its 
picking,  a  favor  which  it  seemed  to  appreciate  by  a  care- 
ful watchfulness  of  our  camps.  Although  a  much  more 
cunnkig  thief  than  the  bear,  we  could  afford  its  plunder- 
ings,  for  it  had  not  so  keen  a  taste  for  blubber  and  its 
capacity  was  limited.  We  thus  got  well  acquainted. 

Up  to  the  present  we  had  failed  in  the  quest  of  the 
seal.  During  the  open  season  of  summer,  without  a 
kayak,  we  could  not  get  near  the  animal.  As  the  winter 
and  the  night  advanced,  we  were  too  busy  with  the  land 
animals  to  watch  the  blow-holes  in  the  new  ice.  When 
the  sea  is  first  spread  with  the  thin  sheet  of  colorless  iee, 
which  later  thickens,  the  seal  rises  to  the  surface,  makes 


402  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

a  breathing  hole,  descends  to  its  feeding  grounds  on  the 
sea  bottom  for  about  ten  minutes,  then  rises  and  makes 
another  hole.  This  line  of  openings  is  arranged  in  a 
circle  or  a  series  of  connecting,  oblong  lines,  marking 
that  particular  seal's  favorite  feeding  ground.  Before 
the  young  ice  is  covered  with  snow,  these  breathing  holes 
are  easily  located  by  a  ring  of  white  frost  crystals,  which 
condense  and  fall  as  the  seal  blows.  But  now  that  the 
winter  had  sheeted  the  black  ice  evenly  with  a  white 
cover,  the  seal  holes,  though  open,  could  not  be  found. 
We  were  not  in  need  of  either  fat  or  meat,  but  the  seal 
skins  were  to  fill  an  important  want.  We  required  for 
boots  and  sled  lashing  the  thin,  tough  seal  hide.  How 
could  we  get  it? 

From  our  underground  den  we  daily  watched  the 
wanderings  of  the  bears.  They  trailed  along  certain 
lines  which  we  knew  to  be  favorable  feeding  grounds  for 
seals,  but  they  did  not  seem  to  be  successful.  Could  we 
not  profit  by  their  superb  scenting  instinct  and  find  the 
blow-holes?  The  bear  had  been  our  worst  enemy,  but 
unconsciously  it  also  proved  to  be  our  best  friend. 

We  started  out  to  trail  the  bear's  footprints.  By 
these  we  were  led  to  the  blow-holes,  where  we  found  the 
snow  about  had  been  circled  with  a  regular  trail.  Most  of 
these  had  been  abandoned,  for  the  seal  has  a  scent  as  keen 
as  the  bear,  but  a  few  "live"  holes  were  located.  Sticks 
were  placed  to  locate  these,  and  after  a  few  days'  careful 
study  and  hard  work  we  harpooned  six  seals.  Taking 
only  the  skins  and  blubber,  we  left  the  carcasses  for 
bruin's  share  of  the  chase — to  be  consumed  later.  We  did 
not  hunt  together  with  the  bear — at  least,  not  knowingly. 

In   these  wanderings   over   game   lands   we  wrere 


NEW  ART  OF  CHASE  403 

permitted  a  very  close  scrutiny  of  the  animals  about,  and 
it  was  at  this' time  that  I  came  to  certain  definite  con- 
clusions as  to  prevailing  laws  of  color  and  dress  of  our 
co-habitants  of  the  Polar  wastes. 

The  animals  of  the  Arctic  assume  a  color  in  accord- 
ance to  their  need  for  heat  transmission.  The  prevail- 
ing influence  is  white,  as  light  furs  permit  the  least 
escape  of  heat.  It  is  evidently  more  important  to  con- 
fine the  heat  of  the  body,  than  to  gather  heat  from  the 
sun's  feeble  rays.  The  necessity  for  bleaching  the  furry 
raiment  becomes  most  operative  in  winter  when  the 
temperature  of  the  air  is  150°  below  that  of  the  body. 
In  the  summer,  when  the  continued  sunshine  is  made 
more  heating  by  the  piercing  influence  of  the  reflect- 
ing snow-fields,  there  is  a  tendency  to  absorb  heat.  Then 
nature  darkens  the  skin,  which  absorbs  heat  accordingly. 

The  relative  advantage  of  light  and  dark  shades 
can  be  easily  demonstrated  by  placing  pieces  of  white 
and  black  cloth  on  a  surface  of  snow,  with  a  slope  at 
right  angles  to  the  sun's  rays.  If,  after  a  few  hours, 
the  cloth  is  removed  the  snow  under  the  black  cloth  will 
be  melted  considerably,  while  that  under  the  white  cloth 
will  show  little  effect. 

Nature  makes  use  of  this  law  of  physics  to  ease 
the  hard  lot  of  its  creatures  fighting  the  weather  in  the 
icy  world.  The  laws  of  color  protection  as  advocated 
in  the  rules  of  natural  selection  are  not  operative  here, 
because  of  the  vitally  important  demand  of  heat  econ- 
omy. If  we  now  seek  the  problem  of  nature's  body 
colored  dyes,  with  heat  economy  as  the  key,  our  calcu- 
lations will  become  easy.  The  serwah,  a  species  of  guil- 
lemot, which  is  as  black  as  the  raven  in  summer,  is  white 


404  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

in  winter.  The  ptarmigan  is  light  as  pearl  in  winter,  but 
its  feathers  become  tipped  with  amber  in  summer.  The 
hare  is  slightly  gray  in  summer,  but,  in  winter,  becomes 
white  as  the  snow  under_ which  it  finds  food  and  shelter. 

The  white  fox  is  gray  in  summer,  the  blue  fox 
darkens  as  the  sun  advances,  while  its  under  fur  becomes 
lighter  with  increasing  cold.  The  caribou  is  dark  brown 
as  it  grazes  the  moss-colored  fields,  but  becomes  nearly 
white  with  the  permanent  snows.  The  polar  bear,  as 
white  as  nature  can  make  it,  with  only  blubber  to  mix 
its  paints,  basks  in  the  midnight  sun  with  a  raiment 
suggestive  of  gold.  The  musk  ox  changes  its  dark 
under-fur  for  a  lighter  shade.  The  raven  has  a  white 
under-coat  in  winter.  The  rat  is  gray  in  summer  but 
bleaches  to  blue-gray  in  winter  time.  The  laws  of  selec- 
tion and  heat  economy  are  thus  combined. 

While  thus  preparing  for  the  coming  winter  by 
seeking  animals  with  furry  pelts,  the  weather  conditions 
made  our  task  increasingly  difficult.  The  storm  of  the 
descending  sun  whipped  the  seas  into  white  fury  and 
brushed  the  lands  with  icy  clouds.  With  the  descent  of 
the  sun,  nature  again  set  its  seal  of  gloom  on  Arctic  life. 
The  cheer  of  a  sunny  heaven  was  blotted  from  the  skies, 
and  the  coming  of  the  winter  blackness  was  signalled  by 
the  beginning  of  a  warfare  of  the  elements.  All  hostile 
nature  was  now  set  loose  to  expend  its  restive  battle 
energy. 

For  brief  moments  the  weather  was  quiet,  and  then 
in  awe-inspiring  silence  we  steered  for  sequestered  gul- 
lies in  quest  of  little  creatures.  This  death-like  stillness 
was  in  harmony  with  our  loneliness.  As  the  sea  was 
stilled  by  the  iron  bonds  of  frost,  as  life  sought  protec- 


NEW  ART  OF  CHASE 


405 


tion  under  the  storm-driven  snows  of  land,  the  winds, 
growing  even  wilder,  beat  a  maddening  onslaught  over 
the  dead,  frozen  world.  The  thunder  of  elements  shook 
the  very  rocks  under  which  we  slept.  Then  again  would 
fall  a  spell  of  that  strange  silence — all  was  dead,  the  sun 
glowed  no  more,  the  creatures  of  the  wilds  were  hushed. 
We  were  all  alone — alone  in  a  vast,  white  dead  world. 


LEMMING 


A  HUNDRED  NIGHTS  IN  AN  UNDER- 
GROUND  DEN 

LIVING  LIKE  MEN  OF  THE  STONE  AGE — THE  DESOLATION 

OF   THE  LONG  NIGHT LIFE  ABOUT   CAPE   SPARBO— 

PREPARING  EQUIPMENT  FOR  THE  RETURN  TO  GREEN- 
LAND— SUNRISE,  FEBRUARY  11,  1909 

XXVIII 

LIFE  ABOUT  CAPE  SPARBO 

The  coming  night  slowly  fixed  its  seal  on  our  field 
of  activity.  Early  in  August  the  sun  had  dipped  under 
the  icy  contour  of  North  Lincoln,  and  Jones  Sound  had 
then  begun  to  spread  its  cover  of  crystal.  The  warm 
rays  gradually  melted  in  a  perpetual  blue  frost.  The 
air  thickened.  The  land  darkened.  The  days  shortened. 
The  night  lengthened.  The  Polar  cold  and  darkness 
of  winter  came  hand  in  hand. 

Late  in  September  the  nights  had  become  too  dark 
to  sleep  in  the  open,  with  inquisitive  bears  on  every  side. 
Storms,  too,  increased  thereafter  and  deprived  us  of  the 
cheer  of  colored  skies.  Thus  we  were  now  forced  to 
seek  a  retreat  in  our  underground  den. 

We  took  about  as  kindly  to  this  as  a  wild  animal 
does  to  a  cage.  For  over  seven  months  we  had  wandered 
over  vast  plains  of  ice,  with  a  new  camp  site  almost 


IN  AN  UNDERGROUND  DEN  407 

every  day.  We  had  grown  accustomed  to  a  wandering 
life  like  that  of  the  bear,  but  we  had  not  developed  his 
hibernating  instinct.  We  were  anxious  to  continue  our 
curious  battle  of  life. 

In  October  the  bosom  of  the  sea  became  blanketed, 
and  the  curve  of  the  snow-covered  earth  was  polarized 
in  the  eastern  skies.  The  final  period  for  the  death  of 
day  and  earthly  glory  was  advancing,  but  Nature  in  her 
last  throes  displayed  some  of  her  most  alluring  phases. 
The  colored  silhouette  of  the  globe  was  perhaps  the  most 
remarkable  display.  In  effect,  this  was  a  shadow  of  the 
earth  thrown  into  space.  By  the  reflected,  refracted 
and  polarized  light  of  the  sun,  the  terrestrial  shadows 
were  outlined  against  the  sky  in  glowing  colors.  Seen 
occasionally  in  other  parts  of  the  globe,  it  is  only  in  the 
Polar  regions,  with  its  air  of  crystal  and  its  surface  of 
mirrors,  that  the  proper  mediums  are  afforded  for  this 
gigantic  spectral  show. 

We  had  an  ideal  location.  A  glittering  sea,  with  a 
level  horizon,  lay  along  the  east  and  west.  The  weather 
was  good,  the  skies  were  clear,  and,  as  the  sun  sank,  the 
sky  over  it  was  flushed  with  orange  or  gold.  This 
gradually  paled,  and  over  the  horizon  opposite  there 
rose  an  arc  in  feeble  prismatic  colors  with  a  dark  zone 
of  purple  under  it.  The  arc  ros.e  as  the  sun  settled;  the 
purple  spread  beyond  the  polarized  bow ;  and  gradually 
the  heavens  turned  a  deep  purple  blue  to  the  zenith, 
while  the  halo  of  the  globe  was  slowly  lost  in  its  own 
shadow. 

The  colored  face  of  the  earth  painted  on  the  screen 
of  the  heavens  left  the  last  impression  of  worldly  charm 
on  the  retina.  In  the  end  of  October  the  battle  of  the 


408  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

elements,  storms  attending  the  setting  of  the  sun,  began 
to  blast  the  air  into  a  chronic  fury.  By  this  time  we 
were  glad  to  creep  into  our  den  and  await  the  vanishing 
weeks  of  ebbing  day. 

In  the  doom  of  night  to  follow,  there  would  at  least 
be  some  quiet  moments  during  which  we  could  stretch 
our  legs.  The  bears,  which  had  threatened  our  exist- 
ence, were  now  kept  off  by  a  new  device  which  served 
the  purpose  for  a  time.  We  had  food  and  fuel  enough 
for  the  winter.  There  should  have  been  nothing  to  have 
disturbed  our  tempers,  but  the  coming  of  the  long  black- 
ness makes  all  Polar  life  ill  at  ease. 

Early  in  November  the  storms  ceased  long  enough 
to  give  us  a  last  fiery  vision.  With  a  magnificent  cardi- 
nal flame  the  sun  rose,  gibbered  in  the  sky  and  sank  be- 
hind the  southern  cliffs  on  November  3.  It  was  not  to 
rise  again  until  February  11  of  the  next  year.  We  were 
therefore  doomed  to  hibernate  in  our  underground  den 
for  at  least  a  hundred  double  nights  before  the  dawn  of 
a  new  day  opened  our  eyes. 

The  days  now  came  and  went  in  short  order.  For 
hygienic  reasons  we  kept  up  the  usual  routine  of  life. 
The  midday  light  soon  darkened  to  twilight.  The  moon 
and  stars  appeared  at  noon.  The  usual  partition  of  time 
disappeared.  All  was  night,  unrelieved  darkness,  mid- 
night, midday,  morning  or  evening. 

We  stood  watches  of  six  hours  each  to  keep  the 
fires  going,  to  keep  off  the  bears  and  to  force  an  interest 
in  a  blank  life.  We  knew  that  we  were  believed  to  be 
dead.  For  our  friends  in  Greenland  would  not  ascribe 
to  us  the  luck  which  came  after  our  run  of  abject 
misfortune.  This  thought  inflicted  perhaps  the  greatest 


IN  AN  UNDERGROUND  DEN  409 

pain  of  the  queer  prolongation  of  life  which  was  per- 
mitted us.  It  was  loneliness,  frigid  loneliness.  I  won- 
dered whether  men  ever  felt  so  desolately  alone. 

We  could  not  have  been  more  thoroughly  isolated 
if  we  had  been  transported  to  the  surface  of  the  moon. 
I  find  myself  utterly  unable  to  outline  the  emptiness  of 
our  existence.  In  other  surroundings  we  never  grasp 
the  full  meaning  of  the  word  "alone."  When  it  is  pos- 
sible to  put  a  foot  out  of  doors  into  sunlight  without  the 
risk  of  a  bear-paw  on  your  neck  it  is  also  possible  to 
run  off  a  spell  of  blues,  but  what  were  we  to  do  with 
every  dull  rock  rising  as  a  bear  ghost  and  with  the  tor- 
ment of  a  satanic  blackness  to  blind  us? 

With  the  cheer  of  day,  a  kindly  nature  and  a  new 
friend,  it  is  easy  to  get  in  touch  with  a  sympathetic 
chord.  The  mere  thought  of  another  human  heart  within 
touch,  even  a  hundred  miles  away,  would  have  eased 
the  suspense  of  the  silent  void.  But  we  could  entertain 
no  such  hopefulness.  We  were  all  alone  in  a  world 
where  every  pleasant  aspect  of  nature  had  deserted  us. 
Although  three  in  number,  a  bare  necessity  had  com- 
pressed us  into  a  single  composite  individuality. 

There  were  no  discussions,  no  differences  of 
opinion.  We  had  been  too  long  together  under  bitter 
circumstances  to  arouse  each  other's  interest.  A  single 
individual  could  not  live  long  in  our  position.  A  selfish 
instinct  tightened  a  fixed  bond  to  preserve  and  protect 
one  another.  As  a  battle  force  we  made  a  formidable 
unit,  but  there  was  no  matches  to  start  the  fires  of 
inspiration. 

The  half  darkness  of  midday  and  the  moonlight  still 
permitted  us  to  creep  from  under  the  ground  and  seek 


410  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

a  few  hours  in  the  open.  The  stone  and  bone  fox  traps 
and  the  trap  caves  for  the  bears  which  we  had  built  dur- 
ing the  last  glimmer  of  day  offered  an  occupation  with 
some  recreation.  But  we  were  soon  deprived  of  this. 

Bears  headed  us  off  at  every  turn.  We  were  not 
permitted  to  proceed  beyond  an  enclosed  hundred  feet 
from  the  hole  of  our  den.  Not  an  inch  of  ground  or  a 
morsel  of  food  was  permitted  us  without  a  contest.  It 
was  a  fight  of  nature  against  nature.  We  either  actually 
saw  the  little  sooty  nostrils  with  jets  of  vicious  breath 
rising,  and  the  huge  outline  of  a  wild  beast  ready  to 
spring  on  us,  or  imagined  we  saw  it.  With  no  adequate 
means  of  defense  we  were  driven  to  imprisonment 
within  the  walls  of  our  own  den. 

From  within,  our  position  was  even  more  tantaliz- 
ing. The  bear  thieves  dug  under  the  snows  over  our 
heads  and  snatched  blocks  of  blubber  fuel  from  under 
our  very  eyes  at  the  port  without  a  consciousness  of 
wrongdoing.  Occasionally  we  ventured  out  to  deliver 
a  lance,  but  each  time  the  bear  would  make  a  leap  for 
the  door  and  would  have  entered  had  the  opening  been 
large  enough.  In  other  cases  we  shot  arrows  through 
the  peep-hole.  A  bear  head  again  would  burst  through 
the  silk  covered  window  near  the  roof,  where  knives,  at 
close  range  and  in  good  light,  could  be  driven  with 
sweet  vengeance. 

As  a  last  resort  we  made  a  hole  through  the  top  of 
the  den.  When  a  bear  was  heard  near,  a  long  torch  was 
pushed  through.  The  snow  for  acres  about  was  then 
suddenly  flashed  with  a  ghostly  whiteness  which  almost 
frightened  us.  But  the  bear  calmly  took  advantage  of 
the  light  to  pick  a  larger  piece  of  the  blubber  upon 


IN  AN  UNDERGROUND  DEN  411 

which  our  lives  depended,  and  then  with  an  air  of  super- 
iority he  would  move  into  the  brightest  light,  usually 
within  a  few  feet  of  our  peep-hole,  where  we  could 
almost  touch  his  hateful  skin.  Without  ammunition  we 
were  helpless. 

Two  weeks  after  sunset  we  heard  the  last  cry  of 
ravens.  After  a  silence  of  several  days  they  suddenly 
descended  with  a  piercing  shout  which  cut  the  frosty 
stillness.  We  crept  out  of  our  den  quickly  to  read  the 
riddle  of  the  sudden  bluster.  There  were  five  ravens  on 
five  different  rocks,  and  the  absence  of  the  celestial  color 
gave  them  quite  an  appropriate  setting.  They  were 
restless:  there  was  no  food  for  them.  A  fox  had  pre- 
ceded them  with  his  usual  craftiness,  and  had  left  no 
pickings  for  feathered  creatures. 

A  family  of  five  had  gathered  about  in  October, 
when  the  spoils  of  the  chase  were  being  cached,  and  we 
encouraged  their  stay  by  placing  food  for  them  regu- 
larly. Some  times  a  sly  fox,  and  at  other  times  a  thiev- 
ing bear,  got  the  little  morsels,  but  there  were  usually 
sufficient  picking  for  the  raven's  little  crop.  They  had 
found  a  suitable  cave  high  up  in  the  great  cliffs  of  gran- 
ite behind  our  den. 

We  were  beginning  to  be  quite  friendly.  My 
Eskimo  companions  ascribed  to  the  birds  almost  human 
qualities  and  they  talked  to  them  reverently,  thereby  dis- 
playing their  heart's  desire.  The  secrets  of  the  future 
were  all  entrusted  to  their  consideration.  Would  the 
"too-loo-ah"  go  to  Eskimo  Lands  and  deliver  their 
messages?  The  raven  said  "ka-ah"  (yes). 

E-tuk-i-shook  said:  "Go  and  take  the  tears  from 
An-na-do-a's  eyes ;  tell  her  that  I  am  alive  and  well  and 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

will  come  to  take  her  soon.  Tell  Pan-ic-pa  (his  father) 
that  I  am  in  Ah-ming-ma-noona  (Musk  Ox  Land). 
Bring  us  some  powder  to  blacken  the  bear's  snout." 
"Ka-ah,  ka-ah,"  said  the  two  ravens  at  once. 

Ah-we-lah  began  an  appeal  to  drive  off  the  bears 
and  to  set  the  raven  spirits  as  guardians  of  our  blubber 
caches.  This  was  uttered  in  shrill  shouts,  and  then,  in 
a  low,  trembling  voice,  he  said:  "Dry  the  tears  of 
mother's  cheeks  and  tell  her  that  we  are  in  a  land  of 
todnu  (tallow)." 

"Ka-ah,"  replied  the  raven. 

"Then  go  to  Ser-wah;  tell  her  not  to  marry  that 
lazy  gull,  Ta-tamh ;  tell  her  that  Ah-we-lah's  skin  is  still 
flushed  with  thoughts  of  her,  that  he  is  well  and  will 
return  to  claim  her  in  the  first  moon  after  sunrise." 
"Ka-ah,  ka-ah,  ka-ah,"  said  the  raven,  and  rose  as  if  to 
deliver  the  messages. 

For  the  balance  of  that  day  we  saw  only  three 
ravens.  The  two  had  certainly  started  for  the  Green- 
land shores.  The  other  three,  after  an  engorgement,  rose 
to  their  cave  and  went  to  sleep  for  the  night  as  we 
thought.  No  more  was  seen  of  them  until  the  dawn  of 
day  of  the  following  year. 

A  few  days  later  we  also  made  other  acquaintances. 
They  were  the  most  interesting  bits  of  life  that  crossed 
our  trail,  and  in  the  dying  effort  to  seek  animal  com- 
panionship our  soured  tempers  were  sweetened  some- 
what by  four-footed  joys. 

A  noise  had  been  heard  for  several  successive  days 
at  eleven  o'clock.  This  was  the  time  chosen  by  the  bears 
for  their  daily  exercise  along  our  foot-path,  and  we  were 
usually  all  awake  with  a  knife  or  a  lance  in  hand,  not 


IN  AN  UNDERGROUND  DEN  413 

because  there  was  any  real  danger,  for  our  house 
cemented  by  ice  was  as  secure  as  a  fort,  but  because 
we  felt  more  comfortable  in  a  battle  attitude.  Through 
the  peep-hole  we  saw  them  marching  up  and  down  along 
the  foot-path  tramped  down  by  our  daily  spells  of  leg- 
stretching. 

They  were  feasting  on  the  aroma  of  our  foot-prints, 
and  when  they  left  it  was  usually  safe  for  us  to  venture 
out.  Noises,  however,  continued  within  the  walls  of  the 
den.  It  was  evident  that  there  was  something  alive  at 
close  range. 

We  were  lonely  enough  to  have  felt  a  certain  de- 
light in  shaking  hands  even  with  bruin  if  the  theft  of 
our  blubber  had  not  threatened  the  very  foundation  of 
our  existence.  For  in  the  night  we  could  not  augment 
our  supplies;  and  without  fat,  fire  and  water  were  im- 
possible. No !  there  was  not  room  for  man  and  bear  at 
Cape  Sparbo.  Without  ammunition,  however,  we  were 
nearly  helpless. 

But  noises  continued  after  bruin's  steps  came  with 
a  decreasing  metallic  ring  from  distant  snows.  There 
was  a  scraping  and  a  scratching  within  the  very  walls 
of  our  den.  We  had  a  neighbor  and  a  companion. 
Who,  or  what,  could  it  be?  We  were  kept  in  suspense 
for  some  time.  When  all  was  quiet  at  the  time  which 
we  chose  to  call  midnight,  a  little  blue  rat  came  out  and 
began  to  tear  the  bark  from  our  willow  lamp  trimmer. 

I  was  on  watch,  awake,  and  punched  E-tuk-i-shook 
without  moving  my  head.  His  eyes  opened  with  sur- 
prise on  the  busy  rodent,  and  Ah-we-lah  was  kicked. 
He  turned  over  and  the  thing  jumped  into  a  rock 
crevasse. 


414  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

The  next  day  we  risked  the  discomfort  of  bruin's 
interview  and  dug  up  an  abundance  of  willow  roots  for 
our  new  tenant.  These  were  arranged  in  appetizing 
display  and  the  rat  came  out  very  soon  and  helped  him- 
self, but  he  permitted  no  familiarity.  We  learned  to 
love  the  creature,  however,  all  the  more  because  of  its 
shyness.  By  alternate  jumps  from  the  roots  to  seclu- 
sion it  managed  to  fill  up  with  all  it  could  carry.  Then 
it  disappeared  as  suddenly  as  it  came. 

In  the  course  of  two  days  it  came  back  with  a  com- 
panion, its  mate.  They  were  beautiful  little  creatures, 
but  little  larger  than  mice.  They  had  soft,  fluffy  fur  of 
a  pearl  blue  color,  with  pink  eyes.  They  had  no  tails. 
Their  dainty  little  feet  were  furred  to  the  claw  tips  with 
silky  hair.  They  made  a  picture  of  animal  delight 
which  really  aroused  us  from  stupor  to  little  spasms  of 
enthusiasm.  A  few  days  were  spent  in  testing  our  in- 
tentions. Then  they  arranged  a  berth  just  above  my 
head  and  became  steady  boarders. 

Their  confidence  and  trust  flattered  our  vanity  and 
we  treated  them  as  royal  guests.  No  trouble  was  too 
great  for  us  to  provide  them  with  suitable  delicacies. 
We  ventured  into  the  darkness  and  storms  for  hours  to 
dig  up  savory  roots  and  mosses.  A  little  stage  was 
arranged  every  day  with  the  suitable  footlights.  In  the 
eagerness  to  prolong  the  rodent  theatricals,  the  little 
things  were  fed  over  and  over,  until  they  became  too  fat 
and  too  lazy  to  creep  from  their  berths. 

They  were  good,  clean  orderly  camp  fellows,  always 
kept  in  their  places  and  never  ventured  to  borrow  our 
bed  furs,  nor  did  they  disturb  our  eatables.  With  a  keen 
sense  of  justice,  and  an  aristocratic  air,  they  passed  our 


IN  AN  UNDERGROUND  DEN  415 

plates  of  carnivorous  foods  without  venturing  a  taste, 
and  went  to  their  herbivorous  piles  of  sod  delicacies. 
About  ten  days  before  midnight  they  went  to  sleep  and 
did  not  wake  for  more  than  a  month.  Again  we  were 
alone.  Now  even  the  bears  deserted  us. 

In  the  dull  days  of  blankness  which  followed,  few 
incidents  seemed  to  mark  time.  The  cold  increased. 
Storms  were  more  continuous  and  came  with  greater 
force.  We  were  cooped  up  in  our  underground  den 
with  but  a  peep-hole  through  the  silk  of  our  old  tent  to 
watch  the  sooty  nocturnal  bluster.  We  were  face  to 
face  with  a  spiritual  famine.  With  little  recreation,  no 
amusements,  no  interesting  work,  no  reading  matter, 
with  nothing  to  talk  about,  the  six  hours  of  a  watch 
were  spread  out  to  weeks. 

We  had  no  sugar,  no  coffee,  not  a  particle  of  civi- 
lized food.  We  had  meat  and  blubber,  good  and  whole- 
some food  at  that.  But  the  stomach  wearied  of  its 
never  changing  carnivorous  stuffing.  The  dark  den, 
with  its  walls  of  pelt  and  bone,  its  floor  decked  with 
frosted  tears  of  ice,  gave  no  excuse  for  cheer.  Insanity, 
abject  madness,  could  only  be  avoided  by  busy  hands 
and  long  sleep. 

My  life  in  this  underground  place  was,  I  suppose, 
like  that  of  a  man  in  the  stone  age.  The  interior  was 
damp  and  cold  and  dark;  with  our  pitiable  lamps  burn- 
ing, the  temperature  of  the  top  was  fairly  moderate, 
but  at  the  bottom  it  was  below  zero.  Our  bed  was  a 
platform  of  rocks  wide  enough  for  three  prostrate  men. 
Its  forward  edge  was  our  seat  when  awake.  Before  this 
was  a  space  where  a  deeper  hole  in  the  earth  permitted 
us  to  stand  upright,  one  at  a  time.  There,  one  by  one, 


416  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

we  dressed  and  occasionally  stood  to  move  our  stiff  and 
aching  limbs. 

On  either  side  of  this  standing  space  was  half  a  tin 
plate  in  which  musk-ox  fat  was  burned.  We  used  moss 
as  a  wick.  These  lights  were  kept  burning  day  and 
night;  it  was  a  futile,  imperceptible  sort  of  heat  they 
gave.  Except  when  we  got  close  to  the  light,  it  was  im- 
possible to  see  one  another's  faces. 

We  ate  twice  daily — without  enjoyment.  We  had 
few  matches,  and  in  fear  of  darkness  tended  our  lamps 
diligently.  There  was  no  food  except  meat  and  tallow ; 
most  of  the  meat,  by  choice,  was  eaten  raw  and  frozen. 
Night  and  morning  we  boiled  a  small  pot  of  meat  for 
broth;  but  we  had  no  salt  to  season  it.  Stooped  and 
cramped,  day  by  day,  I  found  occasional  relief  from  the 
haunting  horror  of  this  life  by  rewriting  the  almost  illeg- 
ible notes  made  on  our  journey. 

My  most  important  duty  was  the  preparation  of 
niy  notes  and  observations  for  publication.  This  would 
afford  useful  occupation  and  save  months  of  time  after- 
wards. But  I  had  no  paper.  My  three  note  books  were 
full,  and  there  remained  only  a  small  pad  of  prescription 
blanks  and  two  miniature  memorandum  books.  I  re- 
solved, however,  to  try  to  work  out  the  outline  of  my 
narrative  in  chapters  in  these.  I  had  four  good 
pencils  and  one  eraser.  These  served  a  valuable 
purpose.  With  sharp  points  I  shaped  the  words  in  small 
letters.  When  the  skeleton  of  the  book  was  ready  I 
was  surprised  to  find  how  much  could  be  crowded  on  a 
few  small  pages.  By  a  liberal  use  of  the  eraser  many 
p'arts  of  pages  were  cleared  of  unnecessary  notes.  En- 
tire lines  were  written  between  all  the  lines  of  the  note 


IN  AN  UNDERGROUND  DEN  417 

books,  the  pages  thus  carrying  two  narrations  or  series 
of  notes. 

By  the  use  of  abbreviations  and  dashes,  a  kind  of 
short-hand  was  devised.  My  art  of  space  economy  com- 
plete, I  began  to  write,  literally  developing  the  very  use- 
ful habit  of  carefully  shaping  every  idea  before  an  at- 
tempt was  made  to  use  the  pencil.  In  this  way  my 
entire  book  and  several  articles  were  written.  Charts, 
films  and  advertisement  boxes  were  covered.  In  all 
150,000  words  were  written,  and  absolute  despair,  which 
in  idleness  opens  the  door  to  madness,  was  averted. 

Our  needs  were  still  urgent  enough  to  enforce  much 
other  work.  Drift  threatened  to  close  the  entrance  to 
our  dungeon  and  this  required  frequent  clearing. 
Blubber  for  the  lamp  was  sliced  and  pounded  every  day. 
The  meat  corner  was  occasionally  stocked,  for  it  re- 
quired several  days  to  thaw  out  the  icy  musk  ox  quarters. 
Ice  was  daily  gathered  and  placed  within  reach  to  keep 
the  water  pots  full.  The  frost  which  was  condensed  out 
of  our  breaths  made  slabs  of  ice  on  the  floor,  and  this  re- 
quired occasional  removal.  The  snow  under  our  bed 
furs,  which  had  a  similar  origin,  was  brushed  out  now 
and  then. 

Soot  from  the  lamps,  a  result  of  bad  housekeeping, 
which  a  proud  Eskimo  woman  would  not  have  tolerated 
for  a  minute,  was  scraped  from  the  bone  rafters  about 
once  a  week.  With  a  difference  of  one  hundred  degrees 
between  the  breathing  air  of  the  den  and  that  outside 
there  was  a  rushing  interchanging  breeze  through  every 
pinhole  and  crevice.  The  ventilation  was  good.  The 
camp  cleanliness  could  almost  have  been  called  hygienic, 
although  no  baths  had  been  indulged  in  for  six  months, 


418  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

and  then  only  by  an  unavoidable,  undesirable  accident. 

Much  had  still  to  be  done  to  prepare  for  our  home- 
going  in  the  remote  period  beyond  the  night.  It  was 
necessary  to  plan  and  make  a  new  equipment.  The 
sledge,  the  clothing,  the  camp  outfit,  everything  which 
had  been  used  in  the  previous  campaign,  were  worn  out. 
Something  could  be  done  by  judicious  repairing,  but 
nearly  everything  required  reconstruction.  In  the  new 
arrangement  we  were  to  take  the  place  of  the  dogs  at 
the  traces  and  the  sledge  loads  must  be  prepared  accord- 
ingly. There  was  before  us  an  unknown  line  of  trouble 
for  three  hundred  miles  before  we  could  step  on  Green- 
land shores.  It  was  only  the  hope  of  homegoing,  which 
gave  some  mental  strength  in  the  night  of  gloom.  Musk 
ox  meat  was  now  cut  into  strips  and  dried  over  the 
lamps.  Tallow  was  prepared  and  moulded  in  portable 
form  for  fuel. 

But  in  spite  of  all  efforts  we  gradually  sank  to  the 
lowest  depths  of  the  Arctic  midnight.  The  little  mid- 
day glimmer  on  the  southern  sky  became  indiscernible. 
Only  the  swing  of  the  Great  Dipper  and  other  stars 
told  the  time  of  the  day  or  night.  We  had  fancied  that 
the  persistent  wind  ruffled  our  tempers.  But  now  it  wras 
still ;  not  a  breath  of  air  moved  the  heavy  blackness.  In 
that  very  stillness  we  found  reasons  for  complaint. 
Storms  were  preferable  to  the  dead  silence;  anything 
was  desirable  to  stir  the  spirits  to  action. 

Still  the  silence  was  only  apparent.  Wind  noises 
floated  in  the  frosty  distance ;  cracking  rocks,  exploding 
glaciers  and  tumbling  avalanches  kept  up  a  muffled 
rumbling  which  the  ear  detected  only  when  it  rested  on 
the  floor  rock  of  our  bed.  The  temperature  was  low — 


IN  AN  UNDERGROUND  DEN  419 

— 48°  F. — so  low  that  at  times  the  very  air  seemed  to 
crack.  Every  creature  of  the  wild  had  been  buried  in 
drift;  all  nature  was  asleep.  In  our  dungeon  all  was  a 
mental  blank. 

Not  until  two  weeks  after  midnight  did  we  awake 
to  a  proper  consciousness  of  life.  The  faint  brightness 
of  the  southern  skies  at  noon  opened  the  eye  to  spiritual 
dawn.  The  sullen  stupor  and  deathlike  stillness  van- 
ished. 

Shortly  after  black  midnight  descended  I  began  to 
experience  a  curious  psychological  phenomenon.  The 
stupor  of  the  days  of  travel  wore  away,  and  I  began  to 
see  myself  as  in  a  mirror.  I  can  explain  this  no  better. 
It  is  said  that  a  man  falling  from  a  great  height  usually 
has  a  picture  of  his  life  flashed  through  his  brain  in  the 
short  period  of  descent.  I  saw  a  similar  cycle  of  events. 

The  panorama  began  with  incidents  of  childhood, 
and  it  seems  curious  now  with  what  infinite  detail  I  saw 
people  whom  I  had  long  forgotten,  and  went  through 
the  most  trivial  experiences.  In  successive  stages  every 
phase  of  life  appeared  and  was  minutely  examined; 
every  hidden  recess  of  gray  matter  was  opened  to  in- 
terpret the  biographies  of  self -analysis.  The  hopes  of 
my  childhood  and  the  discouragements  of  my  youth 
filled  me  with  emotion;  feelings  of  pleasure  and  sadness 
came  as  each  little  thought  picture  took  definite  shape; 
it  seemed  hardly  possible  that  so  many  things,  potent 
for  good  arid  bad,  could  have  been  done  in  so  few  years. 
I  saw  myself,  not  as  a  voluntary  being,  but  rather  as  a 
resistless  atom,  predestined  in  its  course,  being  carried 
on  by  an  inexorable  fate. 

Meanwhile  our  preparations  for  return  were  being 


420  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

accomplished.  This  work  had  kept  us  busy  during  all 
of  the  wakeful  spells  of  the  night.  Much  still  remained 
to  be  done. 

Although  real  pleasure  followed  all  efforts  of 
physical  labor,  the  balking  muscles  required  consider- 
able urging.  Musk  ox  meat  was  cut  into  portable 
blocks,  candles  were  made,  fur  skins  were  dressed  and 
chewed,  boots,  stockings,  pants,  shirts,  sleeping  bags 
were  made.  The  sledge  was  re-lashed,  things  were 
packed  in  bags.  All  was  ready  about  three  weeks  be- 
fore sunrise.  Although  the  fingers  and  the  jaws  were 
thus  kept  busy,  the  mind  and  also  the  heart  were  left 
free  to  wander. 

In  the  face  of  all  our  efforts  to  ward  aside  the  ill 
effects  of  the  night  we  gradually  became  its  victims. 
Our  skin  paled,  our  strength  failed,  the  nerves  weak- 
ened, and  the  mind  ultimately  became  a  blank.  The 
most  notable  physical  effect,  however,  was  the  alarming 
irregularity  of  the  heart. 

In  the  locomotion  of  human  machinery  the  heart  is 
the  motor.  Like  all  good  motors  it  has  a  governor  which 
requires  some  adjustment.  In  the  Arctic,  where  the 
need  of  regulation  is  greatest,  the  facilities  for  adjust- 
ment are  withdrawn.  In  normal  conditions,  as  the  ma- 
chine of  life  pumps  the  blood  which  drives  all,  its  force 
and  its  regularity  are  governed  by  the  never-erring  sun- 
beams. When  these  are  withdrawn,  as  they  are  in  the 
long  night,  the  heart  pulsations  become  irregular;  at 
times  slow,  at  other  times  spasmodic. 

Light  seems  to  be  as  necessary  to  the  animal  as  to 
the  plant.  A  diet  of  fresh  meat,  healthful  hygienic  sur- 
roundings, play  for  the  mind,  recreation  for  the  body, 


IN  AN  UNDERGROUND  DEN  421 

and  strong  heat  from  open  fires,  will  help ;  but  only  the 
return  of  the  heaven-given  sun  will  properly  adjust  the 
motor  of  man. 

As  the  approaching  day  brightened  to  a  few  hours 
of  twilight  at  midday,  we  developed  a  mood  for  animal 
companionship.  A  little  purple  was  now  thrown  on 
the  blackened  snows.  The  weather  was  good.  All  the 
usual  sounds  of  nature  were  suspended,  but  unusual 
sounds  came  with  a  weird  thunder.  The  very  earth 
began  to  shake  in  an  effort  to  break  the  seal  of  frost. 
For  several  days  nothing  moved  into  our  horizon  which 
could  be  imagined  alive. 

About  two  weeks  before  sunrise  the  rats  woke  and 
began  to  shake  their  beautiful  blue  fur  in  graceful  little 
dances,  but  they  were  not  really  alive  and  awake  in  a 
rat  sense  for  several  days.  At  about  the  same  time  the 
ravens  began  to  descend  from  their  hiding  place  and 
screamed  for  food.  There  were  only  three;  two  were 
still  conversing  with  the  Eskimo  maidens  far  away,  as 
my  companions  thought. 

In  my  subsequent  strolls  I  found  the  raven  den  and 
to  my  horror  discovered  that  the  two  were  frozen.  I 
did  not  deprive  E-tuk-i-shook  and  Ah-we-lah  of  their 
poetic  dream;  the  sad  news  of  raven  bereavement  was 
never  told, 

The  foxes  now  began  to  bark  from  a  safe  distance 
and  advanced  to  get  their  share  of  the  camp  spoils. 
Ptarmigan  shouted  from  nearby  rocks.  Wolves  were 
heard  away  in  the  musk  ox  fields,  but  they  did  not 
venture  to  pay  us  a  visit. 

The  bear  that  had  shadowed  us  everywhere  before 
midnight  was  the  last  to  claim  our  friendship  at  dawn. 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

There  were  good  reasons  for  this  which  we  did  not  learn 
until  later.  The  bear  stork  had  arrived.  But  really  we 
had  changed  heart  even  towards  the  bear.  Long  before 
he  returned  we  were  prepared  to  give  him  a  welcome 
reception.  In  our  new  and  philosophical  turn  of  mind 
we  thought  better  of  bruin.  In  our  greatest  distress 
during  the  previous  summer  he  had  kept  us  alive.  In 
our  future  adventures  he  might  perform  a  similar  mis- 
sion. After  all  he  had  no  sporting  proclivities;  he 
did  not  hunt  or  trouble  us  for  the  mere  fun  of  our  dis- 
comfort or  the  chase.  His  aim  in  life  was  the  very 
serious  business  of  getting  food.  Could  we  blame  him  ? 
Had  we  not  a  similar  necessity? 

A  survey  of  our  caches  proved  that  we  were  still 
rich  in  the  coin  of  the  land.  There  remained  meat  and 
blubber  sufficient  for  all  our  needs,  with  considerable 
to  spare  for  other  empty  stomachs.  So,  to  feed  the  bear, 
meat  was  piled  up  in  heaps  for  his  delight. 

The  new  aroma  rose  into  the  bleaching  night  air. 
We  peeped  with  eager  eyes  through  our  ports  to  spot 
results.  The  next  day  at  eleven  o'clock  footsteps  were 
heard.  The  noise  indicated  caution  and  shyness  instead 
of  the  bold  quick  step  which  we  knew  so  well.  There 
was  room  for  only  one  eye  and  only  one  man  at  a  time 
at  the  peep-hole,  and  so  we  took  turns.  Soon  the  bear 
was  sighted,  proceeding  with  the  utmost  caution  behind 
some  banks  and  rocks.  The  blue  of  the  snows,  with 
yellow  light,  dyed  his  fur  to  an  ugly  green.  He  was 
thin  and  gaunt  and  ghostly.  There  was  the  stealth  and 
the  cunning  of  the  fox  in  his  movements.  But  he  could 
not  get  his  breakfast,  the  first  after  a  fast  of  weeks, 
without  coming  squarely  into  our  view. 


IN  AN  UNDERGROUND  DEN  423 

The  den  was  buried  under  the  winter  snows  and 
did  not  disturb  the  creature,  but  the  size  of  the  pile  of 
meat  did  disturb  its  curiosity.  When  within  twenty-five 
yards,  a  few  sudden  leaps  were  made,  and  the  ponderous 
claws  came  down  on  a  walrus  shoulder.  His  teeth  began 
to  grind  like  a  stone  cutter.  For  an  hour  the  bear  stood 
there  and  displayed  itself  to  good  advantage.  Our 
hatred  of  the  creature  entirely  vanished. 

Five  days  passed  before  that  bear  returned.  In 
the  meantime  we  longed  for  it  to  come  back.  We  had 
unconsciously  developed  quite  a  brotherly  bear  interest. 
In  the  period  which  followed  we  learned  that  eleven 
o'clock  was  the  hour,  and  that  five  days  was  the  period 
between  meals.  The  bear  calendar  and  the  clock  were 
consulted  with  mathematical  precision. 

We  also  learned  that  our  acquaintance  was  a 
parent.  By  a  little  exploration  in  February  we  dis- 
covered the  bear  den,  in  a  snow  covered  cave,  less  than 
a  mile  west.  In  it  were  two  saucy  little  teddies  in 
pelts  of  white  silk  that  would  have  gladdened  the  heart 
of  any  child.  The  mother  was  not  at  home  at  the  time, 
and  we  were  not  certain  enough  of  her  friendship,  or 
of  her  whereabouts,  to  play  with  the  twins. 

With  a  clearing  horizon  and  a  wider  circle  of  friend- 
ship our  den  now  seemed  a  cheerful  home.  Our  spirits 
awakened  as  the  gloom  of  the  night  was  quickly  lost  in 
the  new  glitter  of  day. 

On  the  eleventh  of  February  the  snow-covered 
slopes  of  North  Devon  glowed  with  the  sunrise  of  1909. 
The  sun  had  burst  nature's  dungeon.  Cape  Sparbo 
glowed  with  golden  light.  The  frozen  sea  glittered  with 
hills  of  shimmering  lilac.  We  escaped  to  a  joyous  free- 


424  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

dom.  With  a  reconstructed  sled,  new  equipment  and 
newly  acquired  energy  we  were  ready  to  pursue  the 
return  journey  to  Greenland  and  fight  the  last  battle  of 
the  Polar  campaign. 


GUILLEMOT 


HOMEWARD  WITH  A  HALF  SLEDGE  AND 
HALF-FILLED  STOMACHS 

THREE  HUNDRED  MILES  THROUGH  STORM  AND  SNOW  AND 

UPLIFTED   MOUNTAINS  OF   ICE   TROUBLES DISCOVER 

TWO     ISLANDS ANNOATOK     IS     REACHED MEETING 

HARRY    WHITNEY NEWS    OF    PEARY'S    SEIZURE    OF 

SUPPLIES 

XXIX 

BACK  TO  GREENLAND  FRIENDS 

On  February  18,  1908,  the  reconstructed  sledge 
was  taken  beyond  the  ice  fort  and  loaded  for  the  home 
run.  We  had  given  up  the  idea  of  journeying  to  Lan- 
caster Sound  to  await  the  whalers.  There  were  no 
Eskimos  on  the  American  side  nearer  than  Pond's  Inlet. 
It  was  somewhat  farther  to  our  headquarters  on  the 
Greenland  shores,  but  all  interests  would  be  best  served 
by  a  return  to  Annoatok. 

During  the  night  we  had  fixed  all  of  our  attention 
upon  the  return  journey,  and  had  prepared  a  new  equip- 
ment with  the  limited  means  at  our  command ;  but,  trav- 
eling in  the  coldest  season  of  the  year,  it  was  necessary 
to  carry  a  cumbersome  outfit  of  furs,  and  furthermore, 
since  we  were  to  take  the  place  of  the  dogs  in  the  traces, 
we  could  not  expect  to  transport  supplies  for  more  than 


426  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

thirty  days.  In  this  time,  however,  we  hoped  to  reach 
Cape  Sabine,  where  the  father  of  E-tuk-i-shook  had 
been  told  to  place  a  cache  of  food  for  us. 

Starting  so  soon  after  sunrise,  the  actual  daylight 
proved  very  brief,  but  a  brilliant  twilight  gave  a  re- 
markable illumination  from  eight  to  four.  The  light  of 
dawn  and  that  of  the  afterglow  was  tossed  to  and  fro  in 
the  heavens,  from  reflecting  surfaces  of  glitter,  for  four 
hours  preceding  and  following  midday.  To  use  this 
play  of  light  to  the  best  advantage,  it  was  necessary  to 
begin  preparations  early  by  starlight;  and  thus,  when 
the  dim  purple  glow  from  the  northeast  brightened  the 
dull  gray-blue  of  night,  the  start  was  made  for  Green- 
land shores  and  for  home. 

We  were  dressed  in  heavy  furs.  The  temperature 
was  — 49°.  A  light  air  brushed  the  frozen  mist  out  of 
Jones  Sound,  and  cut  our  sooty  faces.  The  sled  was 
overloaded,  and  the  exertion  required  for  its  movement 
over  the  groaning  snow  was  tremendous.  A  false, 
almost  hysterical,  enthusiasm  lighted  our  faces,  but  the 
muscles  were  not  yet  equal  to  the  task  set  for  them. 

Profuse  perspiration  came  with  the  first  hours  of 
dog  work,  and  our  heavy  fur  coats  were  exchanged  for 
the  sealskin  nitshas  (lighter  coat).  At  noon  the  snows 
were  fired  and  the  eastern  skies  burned  in  great  lines  of 
flame.  But  there  was  no  sun  and  no  heat.  We  sat  on 
the  sledge  for  a  prolonged  period,  gasping  for  breath 
and  drinking  the  new  celestial  glory  so  long  absent  from 
our  outlook.  As  the  joy  of  color  was  lost  in  the  cold 
purple  of  half-light,  our  shoulders  were  braced  more 
vigorously  into  the  traces.  The  ice  proved  good,  but 
the  limit  of  strength  placed  camp  in  a  snowhouse  ten 


HOMEWARD  WITH  A  HALF  SLEDGE  427 

miles  from  our  winter  den.  With  the  new  equipment, 
our  camp  life  now  was  not  like  that  of  the  Polar  cam- 
paign. Dried  musk  ox  meat  and  strips  of  musk  fat 
made  a  steady  diet.  Moulded  tallow  served  as  fuel  in 
a  crescent-shaped  disk  of  tin,  in  which  carefully  pre- 
pared moss  was  crushed  and  arranged  as  a  wick.  Over 
this  primitive  fire  we  managed  to  melt  enough  ice  to 
quench  thirst,  and  also  to  make  an  occasional  pot  of 
broth  as  a  luxury.  While  the  drink  was  liquefying,  the 
chill  of  the  snow  igloo  was  also  moderated,  and  we 
crept  into  the  bags  of  musk  ox  skins,  where  agreeable 
repose  and  home  dreams  made  us  forget  the  cry  of  the 
stomach  and  the  torment  of  the  cold. 

At  the  end  of  eight  days  of  forced  marches  we 
reached  Cape  Tennyson.  The  disadvantage  of  man- 
power, when  compared  to  dog  motive  force,  was  clearly 
shown  in  this  effort.  The  ice  was  free  of  pressure  trou- 
bles and  the  weather  was  endurable.  Still,  with  the  best 
of  luck,  we  had  averaged  only  about  seven  miles  daily. 
With  dogs,  the  entire  run  would  have  been  made  easily 
in  two  days. 

As  we  neared  the  land  two  small  islands  were  dis- 
covered. Both  were  about  one  thousand  feet  high,  with 
precipitous  sea  walls,  and  were  on  a  line  about  two  miles 
east  of  Cape  Tennyson.  The  most  easterly  was  about 
one  and  a  half  miles  long,  east  to  west,  with  a  cross- 
section,  north  to  south,  of  about  three-quarters  of  a  mile. 
About  half  a  mile  to  the  west  of  this  was  a  much  smaller 
island.  There  was  no  visible  vegetation,  and  no  life  was 
seen,  although  hare  and  fox  tracks  were  crossed  on  the 
ice.  I  decided  to  call  the  larger  island  E-tuk-i-shook, 
and  the  smaller  Ah-we-lah.  These  rocks  will  stand  as 


428  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

monuments  to  the  memory  of  my  faithful  savage  com- 
rades when  all  else  is  forgotten. 

From  Cape  Tennyson  to  Cape  Isabella  the  coast  of 
Ellesmere  Land  was  charted,  in  the  middle  of  the  last 
century,  by  ships  at  a  great  distance  from  land.  Little 
has  been  added  since.  The  wide  belt  of  pack  thrown 
against  the  coast  made  further  exploration  from  the 
ship  very  difficult,  but  in  our  northward  march  over  the 
sea-ice  it  was  hoped  that  we  might  keep  close  enough  to 
the  shores  to  examine  the  land  carefully. 

A  few  Eskimos  had,  about  fifty  years  previously, 
wandered  along  this  ice  from  Pond's  Inlet  to  the  Green- 
land camps.  They  left  the  American  shores  because 
famine,  followed  by  forced  cannibalism,  threatened  to 
exterminate  the  tribe.  A  winter  camp  had  been  placed 
on  Coburg  Island.  Here  many  walruses  and  bears  were 
secured  during  the  winter,  while  in  summer,  from  Kent 
Island,  many  guillemots  were  secured.  In  moving 
from  these  northward,  by  skin  boat  and  kayak,  they 
noted  myriads  of  guillemots,  or  "acpas,"  off  the  south- 
east point  of  the  mainland.  There  being  no  name  in 
the  Eskimo  vocabulary  for  this  land,  it  was  called  Acpo- 
hon,  or  "The  Home  of  Guillemots."  The  Greenland 
Eskimos  had  previously  called  the  country  "Ah-ming- 
mah  Noona,"  or  Musk  Ox  Land,  but  they  also  adopted 
the  name  of  Acpohon,  so  we  have  taken  the  liberty  of 
spreading  the  name  over  the  entire  island  as  a  general 
name  for  the  most  northern  land  west  of  Greenland. 
In  pushing  northward,  many  of  the  Eskimos  starved, 
and  the  survivors  had  a  bitter  fight  for  subsistence.  Our 
experience  was  similar. 

Near  Cape  Paget  those  ancient  Eskimos  made  a 


PUNCTURED  CANVAS  BOAT  IN  WHICH  WE  PADDLED  1,000  MILES 

FAMINE  DAYS  WHEN  ONLY  STRAY  BIRDS  PREVENTED  STARVATION 

l)LN  IN  WHICH  WERE  SPENT  100  DOUBLE  NIGHTS 


-*::        « 


1  a 


BULL   FIGHTS   WITH   TIIK   MUSK   OX   ABOUT    CAPE    SPAKBO 


HOMEWARD  WITH  A  HALF  SLEDGE  429 

second  winter  camp.  Here  narwhals  and  bears  were 
secured,  and  through  Talbot's  Fiord  a  short  pass  was 
discovered  over  Ellesmere  Land  to  the  musk  ox  country 
of  the  west  shores.  The  Eskimos  who  survived  the  sec- 
ond winter  reached  the  Greenland  shores  during  the 
third  summer.  There  they  introduced  the  kayak,  and 
also  the  bow  and  arrow.  Their  descendants  are  to-day 
the  most  intelligent  of  the  most  northern  Eskimos. 

To  my  companions  the  environment  of  the  new 
land  which  we  were  passing  was  in  the  nature  of  digging 
up  ancient  history.  Several  old  camp  sites  were  lo- 
cated, and  E-tuk-i-shook,  whose  grandfather  was  one  of 
the  old  pioneers,  was  able  to  tell  us  the  incidents  of  each 
camp  with  remarkable  detail. 

As  a  rule,  however,  it  was  very  difficult  to  get  near 
the  land.  Deep  snows,  huge  pressure  lines  of  ice,  and 
protruding  glaciers  forced  our  line  of  march  far  from 
the  Eskimo  ruins  which  we  wished  to  examine. 
From  Cape  Tennyson  to  Cape  Clarence  the  ice  near  the 
open  water  proved  fairly  smooth,  but  the  humid  saline 
surface  offered  a  great  resistance  to  the  metal  plates  of 
the  sled.  Here  ivory  or  bone  plates  would  have  les- 
sened the  friction  very  much.  A  persistent  northerly 
wind  also  brought  the  ice  and  the  humid  discomfort  of 
our  breath  back  to  our  faces  with  painful  results.  Dur- 
ing several  days  of  successive  storms  we  were  impris- 
oned in  the  domes  of  snow.  By  enforced  idleness  we 
were  compelled  to  use  a  precious  store  of  food  and  fuel, 
without  making  any  necessary  advance. 

Serious  difficulties  were  encountered  in  moving 
from  Cape  Clarence  to  Cape  Faraday.  Here  the  ice 
was  tumbled  into  mountains  of  trouble.  Tremendous 


430  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

snowdrifts  and  persistent  gales  from  the  west  made 
traveling  next  to  impossible,  and,  with  no  game  and  no 
food  supply  in  prospect,  I  knew  that  to  remain  idle 
would  be  suicidal.  The  sledge  load  was  lightened,  and 
every  scrap  of  fur  which  was  not  absolutely  necessary 
was  thrown  away.  The  humid  boots,  stockings  and 
sealskin  coats  could  not  be  dried  out,  for  fuel  was  more 
precious  than  clothing.  All  of  this  was  discarded,  and, 
with  light  sleds  and  reduced  rations,  we  forced  along 
over  hummocks  and  drift.  In  all  of  our  Polar  march 
we  had  seen  no  ice  which  offered  so  much  hardship  as 
did  this  so  near  home  shores.  The  winds  again  cut 
gashes  across  our  faces.  With  overwork  and  insuffi- 
cient food,  our  furs  hung  on  bony  eminences  over  shriv- 
eled skins. 

At  the  end  of  thirty-five  days  of  almost  ceaseless 
toil  we  managed  to  reach  Cape  Faraday.  Our  food 
was  gone.  We  were  face  to  face  with  the  most  des- 
perate problem  which  had  fallen  to  our  long  run  of  hard 
luck.  Famine  confronted  us.  We  were  far  from  the 
haunts  of  game;  we  had  seen  no  living  thing  for  a 
month.  Every  fiber  of  our  bodies  quivered  with  cold 
and  hunger.  In  desperation  we  ate  bits  of  skin  and 
chewed  tough  walrus  lines.  A  half  candle  and  three 
cups  of  hot  water  served  for  several  meals.  Some 
tough  walrus  hide  was  boiled  and  eaten  with  relish. 
While  trying  to  masticate  this  I  broke  some  of  my  teeth. 
It  was  hard  on  the  teeth,  but  easy  on  the  stomach,  and 
it  had  the  great  advantage  of  dispelling  for  prolonged 
periods  the  pangs  of  hunger.  But  only  a  few  strips  of 
walrus  line  were  left  after  this  was  used. 

Traveling,  as  we  must,  in  a  circuitous  route,  there 


HOMEWARD  WITH  A  HALF  SLEDGE  431 

was  still  a  distance  of  one  hundred  miles  between  us  and 
Cape  Sabine,  and  the  distance  to  Greenland  might,  by 
open  water,  be  spread  to  two  hundred  miles.  This  un- 
known line  of  trouble  could  not  be  worked  out  in  less 
than  a  month.  Where,  I  asked  in  desperation,  were  we 
to  obtain  subsistence  for  that  last  thirty  days  ? 

To  tfre  eastward,  a  line  of  black  vapors  indicated 
open  water  about  twenty-five  miles  off  shore.  There 
were  no  seals  on  the  ice.  There  were  no  encouraging 
signs  of  life;  only  old  imprints  of  bears  and  foxes  were 
left  on  the  surface  of  the  cheerless  snows  at  each  camp. 
For  a  number  of  days  we  had  placed  our  last  meat  as 
bait  to  attract  the  bears,  but  none  had  ventured  to  pay 
us  a  visit.  The  offshore  wind  and  the  nearness  of  the 
open  water  gave  us  some  life  from  this  point. 

Staggering  along  one  day,  we  suddenly  saw  a  bear 
track.  These  mute  marks,  seen  in  the  half-dark  of  the 
snow,  filled  us  with  a  wild  resurgence  of  hope  for  life. 
On  the  evening  of  March  20  we  prepared  cautiously  for 
the  coming  of  the  bear. 

A  snowhouse  was  built,  somewhat  stronger  than 
usual;  before  it  a  shelf  was  arranged  with  blocks  of 
snow,  and  on  this  shelf  attractive  bits  of  skin  were 
arranged  to  imitate  the  dark  outline  of  a  recumbent 
seal.  Over  this  was  placed  a  looped  line,  through  which 
the  head  and  neck  must  go  in  order  to  get  the  bait. 
Other  loops  were  arranged  to  entangle  the  feet.  All 
the  lines  were  securely  fastened  to  solid  ice.  Peepholes 
were  cut  in  all  sides  of  the  house,  and  a  rear  port  was  cut, 
from  which  we  might  escape  or  make  an  attack.  Our 
lances  and  knives  were  now  carefully  sharpened.  When 
all  was  ready,  one  of  us  remained  on  watch  while  the 


432  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

others  sought  a  needed  sleep.  We  had  not  long  to 
wait.  Soon  a  crackling  sound  on  the  snows  gave  the 
battle  call,  and  with  a  little  black  nose  extended  from  a 
long  neck,  a  vicious  creature  advanced. 

Through  our  little  eye-opening  and  to  our  empty 
stomach  he  appeared  gigantic.  Apparently  as  hungry 
as  we  were,  he  came  in  straight  reaches  for  the  bait. 
The  run  port  was  opened.  Ah-we-lah  and  E-tuk-i- 
shook  emerged,  one  with  a  lance,  the  other  with  a  spiked 
harpoon  shaft.  Our  lance,  our  looped  line,  our  bow 
and  arrow,  I  knew,  however,  would  be  futile. 

During  the  previous  summer,  when  I  foresaw  a 
time  of  famine,  I  had  taken  my  four  last  cartridges  and 
hid  them  in  my  clothing.  Of  the  existence  of  these,  the 
two  boys  knew  nothing.  These  were  to  be  used  at  the 
last  stage  of  hunger,  to  kill  something — or  ourselves. 
That  desperate  time  had  not  arrived  till  now. 

The  bear  approached  in  slow,  measured  steps, 
smelling  the  ground  where  the  skin  lay. 

I  jerked  the  line.  The  loop  tightened  about  the 
bear's  neck.  At  the  same  moment  the  lance  and  the 
spike  were  driven  into  the  growling  creature. 

A  fierce  struggle  ensued.  I  withdrew  one  of  the 
precious  cartridges  from  my  pocket,  placed  it  in  my 
gun,  and  gave  the  gun  to  Ah-we-lah,  who  took  aim. 
and  fired.  When  the  smoke  cleared,  the  bleeding  bear 
lay  on  the  ground. 

We  skinned  the  animal,  and  devoured  the  warm, 
steaming  flesh.  Strength  revived.  Here  were  food 
and  fuel  in  abundance.  We  were  saved!  With  the 
success  of  this  encounter,  we  could  sit  down  and  live 
comfortably  for  a  month;  and  before  that  time  should 


HOMEWARD  WITH  A  HALF  SLEDGE  433 


elapse  seals  would  seek  the  ice  for  sun  baths,  and  when 
seals  arrived,  the  acquisition  of  food  for  the  march  to 
Greenland  would  be  easy. 

But  we  did  not  sit  down.  Greenland  was  in  sight; 
and,  to  an  Eskimo,  Greenland,  with  all  of  its  icy  dis- 
comforts, has  attractions  not  promised  in  heaven.  In 
this  belief,  as  in  most  others,  I  was  Eskimo  by  this  time. 
With  very  little  delay,  the  stomach  was  spread  with 
chops,  and  we  stretched  to  a  gluttonous  sleep,  only  to 
awake  with  appetites  that  permitted  of  prolonged  stuff- 
ing. It  was  a  matter  of  economy  to  fill  up  and  thus 
make  the  sled  load  lighter.  When  more  eating  was 
impossible  we  began  to  move  for  home  shores,  dragging 
a  sled  overloaded  with  the  life-saving  prize. 

A  life  of  trouble,  however,  lay  before  us.  Suc- 
cessive storms,  mountains  of  jammed  ice,  and  deep 
snow,  interrupted  our  progress  and  lengthened  the 
course  over  circuitous  wastes  of  snowdrifts  and  black- 
ened our  horizon.  When,  after  a  prodigious  effort, 
Cape  Sabine  was  reached,  our  food  supply  was  again 
exhausted.* 


*The  Tragedies  of  Cape  Sabine.— Cape  Sabine  has  been  the  scene  of 
one  of  the  saddest  Arctic  tragedies — the  death  by  starvation  of  most  of 
the  members  of  the  Greely  Expedition.  Several  modern  travelers,  including 
Mr.  Peary,  have,  in  passing  here,  taken  occasion  to  criticise  adversely  the 
management  of  this  expedition.  In  his  last  series  of  articles  in  Hampton's 
Magazine,  Peary  has  again  attempted  to  throw  discredit  on  General  Greely. 
It  is  easy,  after  a  lapse  of  forty  years,  to  show  the  mistakes  of  our 
predecessors,  and  thereby  attempt  to  belittle  another's  effort;  but  is  it 
right?  I  have  been  at  Cape  Sabine  in  a  half-starved  condition,  as  General 
Greely  was.  I  have  watched  the  black  seas  of  storm  thunder  the  ice  and 
rock  walls,  as  he  did;  and  I  have  looked  longingly  over  the  impassable 
stretches  of  death-dealing  waters  to  a  land  of  food  and  plenty,  as  he  did. 
I  did  it,  possessing  the  accumulated  knowledge  of  the  thirty  years  which 
have  since  passed,  and  I  nearly  succumbed  in  precisely  the  same  manner 
as  did  the  unfortunate  victims  of  that  expedition.  The  scientific  results 
of  the  Lady  Franklin  Bay  Expedition  were  so  carefully  and  so  thoroughly 
gathered  that  no  expedition  to  the  Arctic  since  has  given  value  of  equal 


434  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Here  an  old  seal  was  found.  It  had  been  caught 
a  year  before  and  cached  by  Pan-ic-pa,  the  father  of 
E-tuk-i-shook.  With  it  was  found  a  rude  drawing 
spotted  with  sooty  tears.  This  told  the  story  of  a  lov- 
ing father's  fruitless  search  for  his  son  and  friends. 
The  seal  meat  had  the  aroma  of  Limburger  cheese,  and 
age  ha  d  changed  its  flavor ;  but,  with  no  other  food  pos- 
sible, our  palates  were  easily  satisfied.  In  an  oil-soaked 
bag  was  found  about  a  pound  of  salt.  We  ate  this  as 
sugar,  for  no  salt  had  passed  over  our  withered  tongues 
for  over  a  year. 

The  skin,  blubber  and  meat  were  devoured  with  a 
relish.  Every  eatable  part  of  the  animal  was  packed  on 
the  sled  as  we  left  the  American  shore. 

Smith  Sound  was  free  of  ice,  and  open  water  ex- 
tended sixty  miles  northward.  A  long  detour  was  nec- 
essary to  reach  the  opposite  shores,  but  the  Greenland 
shores  were  temptingly  near.  With  light  hearts  and 


importance.    Greely's  published  record  is  an  absolute  proof  of  his  ability 
as  a  leader  and  a  vindication  of  the  unfair  insinuations  of  later  rivals. 

In  passing  along  this  same  coast,  E-tuk-i-shook  called  my  attention  to 
several  graves,  some  of  which  we  opened.  In  other  places  we  saw  human 
bones  which  had  been  left  unburied.  They  were  scattered,  and  had  been 
picked  by  the  ravens,  the  foxes  and  the  wolves.  With  a  good  deal  of 
sorrow  and  reserve  I  then  learned  one  of  the  darkest  unprinted  pages  of 
Arctic  history.  When  the  steamer  Erie  returned,  in  1901,  a  large  number 
of  Eskimos  were  left  with  Mr.  Peary  near  Cape  Sabine.  They  soon  after 
developed  a  disease  which  Mr.  Peary's  ship  brought  to  them.  There 
was  no  medicine  and  no  doctor  to  save  the  dying  victims.  Dr.  T.  F. 
Dedrick,  who  had  served  Mr.  Peary  faithfully,  was  dismissed  without  the 
payment  of  his  salary,  because  of  a  personal  grudge,  but  Dedrick  refused 
to  go  home  and  leave  the  expedition  without  medical  help.  He  remained 
at  Etah,  living  with  the  Eskimos  in  underground  holes,  as  wild  men  do, 
sacrificing  comfort  and  home  interests  for  no  other  purpose  except  to 
maintain  a  clean  record  of  helpfulness.  As  the  winter  fcnd  the  night 
advanced,  Dr.  Dedrick  got  news  that  the  Eskimos  were  sick  and 
required  medical  assistance.  He  crossed  the  desperate  reaches  of  Smith 
Sound  at  night,  and  offered  Mr.  Peary  medical  assistance  to  save  the 
dying  natives.  Peary  refused  to  allow  Dedrick  to  attempt  to  cure  the 
afflicted,  crying  people.  Dedrick  had  been  without  civilized  food  for 


HOMEWARD  WITH  A  HALF  SLEDGE  435 

cheering  premonitions  of  home,  we  pushed  along  Bache 
Peninsula  to  a  point  near  Cape  Louis  Napoleon.  The 
horizon  was  now  cleared  of  trouble.  The  ascending  sun 
had  dispelled  the  winter  gloom  of  the  land.  Leaping 
streams  cut  through  crystal  gorges.  The  ice  moved; 
the  sea  began  to  breathe.  The  snows  sparkled  with  the 
promise  of  double  days  and  midnight  suns. 

Life's  buds  had  opened  to  full  blossom.  On  the 
opposite  shores,  which  now  seemed  near,  Nature's  incu- 
bators had  long  worked  overtime  to  start  the  little  ones 
of  the  wilds.  Tiny  bears  danced  to  their  mothers'  call; 
baby  seals  sunned  in  downy  pelts.  Little  foxes  were 
squinting  at  school  in  learning  the  art  of  sight.  In  the 
wave  of  germinating  joys  our  suppressed  nocturnal 
passions  rose  with  surprise  anew.  We  were  raised  to 
an  Arctic  paradise. 

As  it  lay  in  prospect,  Greenland  had  the  charm  of 
Eden.  There  were  the  homes  of  my  savage  compan- 
ions. It  was  a  stepping-stone  to  my  home,  still  very 


months,  and  was  not  well  himself  after  the  terrible  journey  over  the 
storm-swept  seas  of  ice.  Before  returning,  he  asked  for  some  coffee,  a 
little  sugar  and  a  few  biscuits.  These  Mr.  Peary  refused  him.  Dr.  Dedrick 
returned.  The  natives,  in  fever  and  pain,  died.  Theirs  are  the  bones 
scattered  by  the  wild  beasts.  Who  is  responsible  for  these  deaths? 

"Peary-tiglipo-savigaxua"  (Peary  has  stolen  the  iron  stone),  was  now 
repeated  with  bitterness  by  the  Eskimos.  In  1897  it  occurred  to  Mr. 
Peary  that  the  museums  would  be  interested  in  the  Eskimos,  and  also  in 
the  so-called  "Star  Stone,"  owned  by  the  Eskimos.  It  had  been  passed 
down  from  generation  to  generation  as  a  tribal  property;  from  it  the 
natives,  from  the  Stone  Age,  had  chipped  metal  for  weapons.  This 
"meteorite"  was,  without  Eskimo  consent,  put  by  Mr.  Peary  on  his  ship; 
without  their  consent,  also,  were  put  a  group  of  men  and  women  and 
children  on  the  ship.  All  were  taken  to  New  York  for  museum  purposes. 
In  New  York  the  precious  meteorite  was  sold,  but  the  profits  were  not 
divided  with  the  rightful  owners.  The  men,  wome'n  and  children  (mer- 
chandise of  similar  value)  were  placed  in  a  cellar,  awaiting  a  marketplace. 
Before  the  selling  time  arrived,  all  but. one  died  of  diseases  directly 
arising  out  of  inhuman  carelessness,  due  to  the  dictates  of  commercialism. 
Who  is  responsible  for  the  death  of  this  group  of  innocent  wild  folk? 


436  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

far  off.  It  was  a  land  where  man  has  a  fighting  chance 
for  his  life. 

In  reality,  we  were  now  in  the  most  desperate 
throes  of  the  grip  of  famine  which  we  had  encountered 
during  all  of  our  hard  experience.  Greenland  was  but 
thirty  miles  away.  But  we  were  separated  from  it  by 
impossible  open  water — a  hopeless  stormy  deep.  To 
this  moment  I  do  not  know  why  we  did  not  sit  down  and 
allow  the  blood  to  cool  with  famine  and  cold.  We  had 
no  good  reason  to  hope  that  we  could  cross,  but  again 
hope — "the  stuff  that  goes  to  make  dreams" — kept  our 
eyes  open. 

We  started.  We  were  as  thin  as  it  is  possible  for 
men  to  be.  The  scraps  of  meat,  viscera,  and  skin  of  the 
seal,  buried  for  a  year,  was  now  our  sole  diet.  We  trav- 
eled the  first  two  days  northward  over  savage  uplifts  of 
hummocks  and  deep  snows,  tripping  and  stumbling  over 
blocks  of  ice  like  wounded  animals.  Then  we  reached 
good,  smooth  ice,  but  open  water  forced  us  northward, 
ever  northward  from  the  cheering  cliffs  under  which  our 
Greenland  homes  and  abundant  supplies  were  located. 
No  longer  necessary  to  lift  the  feet,  we  dragged  the  ice- 
sheeted  boots  step  after  step  over  smooth  young  ice. 
This  eased  our  tired,  withered  legs,  and  long  distances 
were  covered.  The  days  were  prolonged,  the  decayed 
seal  food  ran  low,  water  was  almost  impossible.  Life 
no  longer  seemed  worth  living.  We  had  eaten  the 
strips  of  meat  and  frozen  seal  cautiously.  We  had 
eaten  other  things — our  very  boots  and  leather  lashings 
as  a  last  resort. 

So  weak  that  we  had  to  climb  on  hands  and  knees, 
we  reached  the  top  of  an  iceberg,  and  from  there  saw 


HOMEWARD  WITH  A  HALF  SLEDGE  437 

Annoatok.  Natives,  who  had  thought  us  long  dead, 
rushed  out  to  greet  us.  There  I  met  Mr.  Harry  Whit- 
ney. As  I  held  his  hand,  the  cheer  of  a  long-forgotten 
world  came  over  me.  With  him  I  went  to  my  house, 
only  to  find  that  during  my  absence  it  had  been  confis- 
cated. A  sudden  bitterness  rose  within  which  it  was 
difficult  to  hide.  A  warm  meal  dispelled  this  for  a  time. 

In  due  time  I  told  Whitney:  "I  have  reached  the 
Pole." 

Uttering  this  for  the  first  time  in  English,  it  came 
upon  me  that  I  was  saying  a  remarkable  thing.  Yet 
Mr.  Whitney  showed  no  great  surprise,  and  his  quiet 
congratulation  confirmed  what  was  in  my  mind — that  I 
had  accomplished  no  extraordinary  or  unbelievable 
thing;  for  to  me  the  Polar  experience  was  not  in  the 
least  remarkable,  considered  with  our  later  adventures. 

Mr.  Whitney,  as  is  now  well  known,  was  a  sports- 
man from  New-  Haven,  Connecticut,  who  had  been 
spending  some  months  hunting  in  the  North.  He  had 
made  Annoatok  the  base  of  his  operations,  and  had  been 
spending  the  winter  in  the  house  which  I  had  built  of 
packing-boxes. 

The  world  now  seemed  brighter.  The  most  potent 
factor  in  this  change  was  food — and  more  food — a  bath 
and  another  bath — and  clean  clothes.  Mr.  Whitney 
offered  me  unreservedly  the  hospitality  of  my  own 
camp.  He  instructed  Prit chard  to  prepare  meal  after 
meal  of  every  possible  dish  that  our  empty  stomachs  had 
craved  for  a  year.  The  Eskimo  boys  were  invited  to 
share  it. 

Between  meals,  or  perhaps  we  had  better  call  meals 
courses  (for  it  was  a  continuous  all-night  perform- 


438  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

ance — interrupted  by  baths  and  breathing  spells  to  pre- 
vent spasms  of  the  jaws) — between  courses,  then,  there 
were  washes  with  real  soap  and  real  cleansing  warm 
water,  the  first  that  we  had  felt  for  fourteen  months. 
Mr.  Whitney  helped  to  scrape  my  angular  anatomy, 
and  he  volunteered  the  information  that  I  was  the 
dirtiest  man  he  ever  saw. 

From  Mr.  Whitney  I  learned  that  Mr.  Peary  had 
reached  Annoatok  about  the  middle  of  August,  1908, 
and  had  placed  a  boatswain  named  Murphy,  assisted 
by  William  Pritchard,  a  cabin  boy  on  the  Roosevelt,  in 
charge  of  my  stores,  wiiich  he  had  seized.  Murphy  was 
anything  but  tactful  and  considerate ;  and  in  addition  to 
taking  charge  of  my  goods,  had  been  using  them  in  trad- 
ing as  money  to  pay  for  furs  to  satisfy  Mr.  Peary's 
hunger  for  commercial  gain.  Murphy  went  south  in 
pursuit  of  furs  after  my  arrival. 

For  the  first  few  days  I  was  too  weak  to  inquire 
into  the  theft  of  my  camp  and  supplies.  Furthermore, 
with  a  full  stomach,  and  Mr.  Whitney  as  a  warm  friend 
at  hand,  I  was  indifferent.  I  was  not  now  in  any  great 
need.  For  by  using  the  natural  resources  of  the  land,  as 
I  had  done  before,  it  was  possible  to  force  a  way  back 
to  civilization  from  here  with  the  aid  of  my  Eskimo 
friends. 

Little  by  little,  however,  the  story  of  that  very 
strange  "Relief  Station  for  Dr.  Cook"  was  unraveled, 
and  I  tell  it  here  with  no  ulterior  notion  of  bitterness 
against  Mr.  Peary.  I  forgave  him  for  the  practical 
theft  of  my  supplies;  but  this  is  a  very  important  part  of 
the  controversy  which  followed,  a  controversy  which 
can  be  understood  only  by  a  plain  statement  of  the  inci- 


HOMEWARD  WITH  A  HALF  SLEDGE  439 

dents  which  led  up  to  and  beyond  this  so-called  "Relief 
Station  for  Dr.  Cook,"  which  was  a  relief  only  in  the 
sense  that  I  was  relieved  of  a  priceless  store  of  supplies. 

When  Mr.  Peary  heard  of  the  execution  of  my 
plans  to  try  for  the  Pole  in  1907,  and  before  he  left 
on  his  last  expedition,  he  accused  me  of  various  viola- 
tions of  what  he  chose  to  call  "Polar  Ethics."  No  ap- 
plication had  been  filed  by  me  to  seek  the  Pole.  Now  I 
was  accused  of  stealing  his  route,  his  Pole,  and  his  peo- 
ple. This  train  of  accusations  was  given  to  the  press, 
and  with  the  greatest  possible  publicity.  A  part  of  this 
was  included  in  an  official  complaint  to  the  International 
Bureau  of  Polar  Research  at  Brussels. 

Now,  what  are  Polar  ethics?  There  is  no  separate 
code  for  the  Arctic.  The  laws  which  govern  men's 
bearing  towards  each  other  in  New  York  are  good  in 
any  part  of  the  world.  One  cannot  be  a  democrat  in 
civilized  eyes  and  an  autocrat  in  the  savage  world.  One 
cannot  cry,  "Stop  thief!"  and  then  steal  the  thief's 
booty.  If  you  are  a  member  of  the  brotherhood  of 
humanity  in  one  place,  you  must  be  in  another.  In 
short,  he  who  is  a  gentleman  in  every  sense  of  the  word 
needs  no  memory  for  ethics.  It  is  only  the  modern 
political  reformer  who  has  need  of  the  cloak  of  the 
hypocrisy  of  ethics  to  hide  his  own  misdeeds.  An  ex- 
plorer should  not  stoop  to  this. 

Who  had  the  power  to  grant  a  license  to  seek  the 
Pole?  If  you  wish  to  invade  the  forbidden  regions  of 
Thibet,  or  the  interior  of  Siberia,  a  permit  is  necessary 
from  the  governments  interested.  But  the  Pole  is  a 
place  no  nation  owned,  by  right  of  discovery,  occupa- 
tion, or  otherwise. 


440  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

If  pushing  a  ship  up  the  North  Atlantic  waters  to 
the  limit  of  navigation  was  a  trespass  on  Mr.  Peary's 
preserve,  then  I  am  bound  to  plead  guilty.  But  ships 
had  gone  that  way  for  a  hundred  years  before  Mr. 
Peary  developed  a  Polar  claim.  If  I  am  guilty,  then 
he  is  guilty  of  stealing  the  routes  of  Davis,  Kane, 
Greely  and  a  number  of  others.  But  as  I  view  the  sit- 
uation, a  modern  explorer  should  take  a  certain  pride 
in  the  advantages  afforded  by  his  worthy  predecessors. 
I  take  a  certain  historic  delight  in  having  followed  the 
routes  of  the  early  pathfinders  to  a  more  remote  destina- 
tion. This  indebtedness  and  this  honor  I  do  now,  as 
heretofore,  acknowledge.  The  charge  that  I  stole  Mr. 
Peary's  route  is  incorrect.  For,  from  the  limit  of  navi- 
gation on  the  Greenland  side,  my  track  was  forced  over 
a  land  which,  although  under  Mr.  Peary's  eyes  for 
twenty  years,  was  explored  by  Sverdrup,  who  got  the 
same  unbrotherly  treatment  from  Mr.  Peary  which  he 
has  shown  to  every  explorer  who  has  had  the  misfortune 
to  come  within  the  circle  he  has  drawn  about  an  imagin- 
ary private  preserve. 

The  charge  of  borrowing  Peary's  ideas,  by  which 
is  meant  the  selection  of  food  and  supplies  and  the  adop- 
tion of  certain  methods  of  travel,  is  equally  unfounded. 
For  Mr.  Peary's  weakest  chain  is  his  absolute  lack  of 
system,  order,  preparation  or  originality.  This  is 
commented  upon  by  the  men  of  every  one  of  his  previ- 
ous expeditions.  Mr.  Peary  early  charged  that  my 
system  of  work  and  my  methods  of  travel  were  borrowed 
from  him.  This  was  not  true;  but  when  he  later,  in  a 
desperate  effort  to  say  unkind  things,  said  that  my  sys- 
tem— the  system  borrowed  from  himself — was  ineffi- 


HOMEWARD  WITH  A  HALF  SLEDGE  441 

cient,  the  charge  becomes  laughable.    As  to  the  Pole— 
if  Mr.  Peary  has  a  prior  lien  on  it — it  is  there  still.    We 
did   not   take   it   away.      We    simply   left    our   foot- 
prints there. 

Now  as  to  the  charge  of  using  Mr.  Peary's  sup- 
plies and  his  people — by  assuming  a  private  preserve  of 
all  the  reachable  Polar  wilderness  of  this  section,  he 
might  put  up  a  plausible  claim  to  it  as  a  private  hunt- 
ing ground.  If  this  claim  is  good,  then  I  am  guilty  of 
trespass.  But  it  was  only  done  to  satisfy  the  pangs  of 
hunger. 

This  claim  of  the  ownership  of  the  animals  of  the 
unclaimed  North  might  be  put  with  plausible  excuses 
to  The  Hague  Tribunal.  But  it  is  a  claim  no  serious 
person  would  consider.  The  same  claim  of  ownership, 
however,  cannot  be  said  of  human  life. 

The  Eskimos  are  a  free  and  independent  people. 
They  acknowledge  no  chiefs  among  themselves  and 
submit  to  no  outside  dictators.  They  are  likely  to 
call  an  incoming  stranger  "nalegaksook,"  which  the 
vanity  of  the  early  travelers  interpreted  as  the  "great 
chief."  But  the  intended  interpretation  is  "he  who  has 
much  to  barter"  or  "the  great  trader."  This  is  what 
they  call  Mr.  Peary.  The  same  compliment  is  given  to 
other  traders,  whalers  or  travelers  with  whom  they  do 
business.  Despite  his  claims  Mr.  Peary  has  been  re- 
garded as  no  more  of  a  benefactor  than  any  other 
explorer. 

After  delivering,  early  in  1907,  an  unreasonable 
and  uncalled  for  attack,  Mr.  Peary,  two  months  after 
the  Pole  had  been  reached  by  me,  went  North 
with  two  ships,  with  all  the  advantage  that  unlimited 


442  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

funds  and  influential  friends  could  give.  At  about  the 
same  time  my  companion,  Rudolph  Francke,  started 
south  under  my  instructions,  and  he  locked  my  box- 
house  at  Annoatok  wherein  were  stored  supplies  suffi- 
cient for  two  years  or  more. 

The  key  was  entrusted  to  a  trustworthy  Eskimo. 
Under  his  protection  this  precious  life-saving  supply 
was  safe  for  an  indefinite  time.  With  it  no  relief  ex- 
pedition or  help  from  the  outside  world  was  necessary. 

Francke  had  a  hard  time  as  he  pushed  southward, 
with  boat  and  sledge.  Moving  supplies  to  the  limit  of 
his  carrying  capacity,  he  fought  bravely  against  storms, 
broken  ice  and  thundering  seas.  The  route  proved  all 
but  impossible,  but  at  last  his  destination  at  North  Star 
was  reached,  only  for  him  to  find  that  he  was  too  late 
for  the  whalers  he  had  expected.  Impossible  to  return 
to  our  northern  camp  at  that  time,  and  having  used  all 
of  his  civilized  food  en  route,  he  was  now  compelled  to 
accept  the  hospitality  of  the  natives,  in  their  unhygienic 
dungeons.  For  food  there  was  nothing  but  the  semi- 
putrid  meat  and  blubber  eaten  by  the  Eskimos. 
After  a  long  and  desperate  task  by  boat  and  sled  he 
returned  to  Etah  but  he  was  absolutely  unable  to  pro- 
ceed farther.  Francke's  health  failed  rapidly  and  when, 
as  he  thought,  the  time  had  arrived  to  lay  down  and  quit 
life,  a  big  prosperous  looking  ship  came  into  the  harbor. 
He  had  not  tasted  civilized  food  for  months,  and  longed, 
as  only  a  sick,  hungry  man  can,  for  coffee  and  bread. 

Almost  too  weak  to  arise  from  his  couch  of  stones, 
he  mustered  up  enough  strength  to  stumble  over  the 
rails  of  that  ship  of  plenty.  After  gathering  sufficient 
breath  to  speak,  he  asked  for  bread  and  coffee.  It  was 


HOMEWARD  WITH  A  HALF  SLEDGE  443 

breakfast  time.  No  answer  came  to  that  appeal.  He 
was  put  off  the  ship.  He  went  back  to  his  cheerless 
cave  and  prayed  that  death  might  close  his  eyes  to 
further  trouble.  Somewhat  later,  when  it  was  learned 
that  there  was  a  house  and  a  large  store  of  supplies  at 
Annoatok,  and  that  the  man  had  in  his  possession  furs 
and  ivory  valued  at  $10,000,  there  was  a  change  of  heart 
in  Mr.  Peary.  Francke  was  called  on  board,  was  given 
bread  and  coffee  and  whiskey.  Too  weak  to  resist,  he 
was  bullied  and  frightened,  and  forced  under  duress  to 
sign  papers  which  he  did  not  understand.  To  get  home 
to  him  meant  life ;  to  remain  meant  death.  And  the  ship 
before  him  was  thus  his  only  chance  for  life.  Under  the 
circumstances  he  would  naturally  have  put  his  name  to 
any  paper  placed  under  his  feeble  eyes.  But  the  law  of 
no  land  would  enforce  such  a  document. 

In  this  way  Mr.  Peary  compelled  him  to  turn  over 
$10,000  worth  of  furs  and  ivory,  besides  my  station  and 
supplies,  worth  at  least  $35,000,  which  were  not  his  to 
turn  over.  The  prized  ivory  tusks  and  furs  were  im- 
mediately seized  and  sent  back  on  the  returning  ship. 

One  of  the  narwhal  tusks,  worth  to  me  at  least 
$1,000,  was  polished  and  sent  as  Peary's  trophy  to 
President  Roosevelt.  Under  the  circumstances  has  not 
the  President  been  made  the  recipient  of  stolen  goods? 

When  Francke,  as  a  passenger,  returned  on  the 
Peary  supply  ship,  Erik,  a  bill  of  one  hundred  dollars 
was  presented  for  his  passage.  This  bill  was  presum- 
ably the  bill  for  the  full  cost  of  his  return.  But  the 
priceless  furs  and  ivory  trophies  were  confiscated  with- 
out a  murmur  of  conscious  wrongdoing.  This  is  what 
happened  as  the  ship  went  south. 


444  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Now  let  us  follow  the  ship  Roosevelt  in  its  piratic 
career  northward.  With  Mr.  Peary  as  chief  it  got  to 
Etah.  From  there  instructions  were  given  to  seize  my 
house  and  supplies.  This  was  done  over  the  signature 
of  Mr.  Peary  to  a  paper  which  started  out  with  the 
following  shameless  hypocrisy: 

"This  is  a  relief  station  for  Dr.  Cook." 

According  to  Mr.  Whitney  even  Captain  Bartlett 
quivered  with  indignation  at  the  blushing  audacity  of 
this  steal.  The  stores  were  said  to  be  abandoned.  The 
men,  with  Peary's  orders,  went  to  Koo-loo-ting-wah  and 
forced  from  him  the  key  with  which  to  open  the  care- 
fully guarded  stores.  The  house  was  reconstructed. 

Murphy,  a  rough  Newfoundland  bruiser,  who  had 
been  accustomed  to  kick  sailors,  was  placed  in  charge 
with  autocratic  powers.  Murphy  could  neither  read 
nor  write,  but  he  was  given  a  long  letter  of  instruction 
to  make  a  trading  station  of  my  home  and  to  use  my 
supplies. 

Now  if  Mr.  Peary  required  my  supplies  for  legiti- 
mate exploration  I  should  have  been  glad  to  give  him 
my  last  bread ;  but  to  use  my  things  to  satisfy  his  greed 
for  commercial  gain  was,  when  I  learned  it,  bitter 
medicine. 

Because  Murphy  could  not  write,  Pritchard  was 
left  with  him  to  read  the  piratic  instructions  once  each 
week.  Pritchard  was  also  to  keep  account  of  the  furs 
bought  and  the  prices  paid — mostly  in  my  coin.  Mur- 
phy soon  forbade  the  reading  of  the  instructions,  and 
also  stopped  the  stock-taking  and  bookkeeping.  The 
hypocrisy  of  the  thing  seemed  to  pinch  even  Murphy's 
narrow  brain. 


HOMEWARD  WITH  A  HALF  SLEDGE  445 

This  same  deliberate  Murphy,  accustomed  to  life  in 
barracks,  held  the  whip  for  a  year  over  the  head  of  Harry 
Whitney,  a  man  of  culture  and  millions.  Money,  how- 
ever, was  of  no  use  there.  Audacity  and  self-assumed 
power,  it  seems,  ruled  as  it  did  in  times  of  old  when 
buccaneers  deprived  their  victims  of  gold,  and  walked 
them  off  a  plank  into  the  briny  deep. 

Murphy  and  Pritchard,  the  paid  traders,  fixed 
themselves  cosily  in  my  camp.  Mr.  Whitney  had  been 
invited  as  a  guest  to  stay  and  hunt  for  his  own  pleasure. 
The  party  lived  for  a  year  at  my  expense,  but  the  lot  of 
Whitney  was  very  hard  as  an  invited  guest,  a  privilege 
for  which  I  was  told  he  had  paid  Mr.  Peary  two  thous- 
and dollars  or  more.  His  decision  to  stay  had  come  only 
after  a  disappointment  in  a  lack  of  success  of  hunting 
during  the  summer  season.  He  was,  therefore,  ill- 
provided  for  the  usual  Polar  hardships.  With  no  food, 
and  no  adequate  clothing  of  his  own,  he  was  dependent 
on  the  dictates  of  Murphy  to  supply  him.  As  time 
went  on,  the  night  with  its  awful  cold  advanced.  Mur- 
phy gathered  in  all  the  furs  ard  absolutely  prohibited 
Whitney  from  getting  suitable  furs  for  winter  clothing. 
He,  therefore,  shivered  throughout  the  long  winter  in 
his  sheepskin  shooting  outfit.  Several  times  he  was  at 
the  point  of  a  hand-to-hand  encounter  with  Murphy, 
but  with  young  Pritchard  as  a  friend  and  gentlemanly 
instincts  to  soften  his  manner,  he  grit  his  teeth  and 
swallowed  the  insults. 

His  ambition  for  a  hunting  trip  was  frustrated 
because  it  interfered  with  Murphy's  plans  for  trading  in 
skins.  The  worst  and  most  brutal  treatment  was  the 
almost  inconceivable  cruelty  of  his  not  allowing  Mr. 


446  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Whitney  enough  food  for  a  period  of  months,  not  even 
of  my  supplies,  although  this  food  was  used  eventually 
to  feed  useless  dogs. 

All  of  this  happened  under  Mr.  Peary's  authority, 
and  under  the  coarse,  swaggering  Murphy,  whom  Mr. 
Peary,  in  his  book,  calls  "a  thoroughly  trustworthy 
man!"  Mr.  Peary's  later  contention,  in  a  hypocritical 
effort  to  clear  himself  (see  "The  North  Pole,"  page  76) 
that  he  placed  Murphy  in  charge  "to  prevent  the 
Eskimos  from  looting  the  supplies  and  equipment  left 
there  by  Dr.  Cook,"  is  a  mean,  petty  and  unworthy  slur 
upon  a  brave,  loyal  people,  among  whom  thievery  is  a 
thing  unknown.  Unknown,  yes,  save  when  white  men 
without  honor,  without  respect  for  property  or  the 
ethics  of  humanity,  which  the  Eskimos  instinctively 
have,  invade  their  region  and  rob  them  and  fellow  ex- 
plorers with  the  brazenness  of  middle-aged  buccaneers. 


ANNOATOK  TO  UPERNAVIK 

ELEVEN    HUNDRED    MILES    SOUTHWARD    OVER    SEA    AND 

LAND AT      ETAH OVERLAND       TO      THE      WALRUS 

GROUNDS ESKIMO      COMEDIES     AND      TRAGEDIES A 

RECORD  RUN  OVER  MELVILLE  BAY — FIRST  NEWS  FROM 
PASSING  SHIPS — THE  ECLIPSE  OF  THE  SUN — SOUTH- 
WARD BY  STEAMER  GODTHAAB 

XXX 

ALONG  DANISH  GREENLAND 

A  few  interesting  days  were  spent  with  Mr.  Whit- 
ney at  Annoatok.  The  Eskimos,  in  the  meantime,  had 
all  gone  south  to  the  walrus  hunting  grounds  at  Nuerke. 
Koo-loo-ting-wah  came  along  with  a  big  team  of  dogs. 
Here  was  an  opportunity  to  attempt  to  reach  the  Danish 
settlements — for  to  get  home  quickly  was  now  my  all- 
absorbing  aim.  Koo-loo-ting-wah  was  in  my  service. 
He  was  guarding  my  supplies  in  1908  when  the  ship 
Roosevelt  had  come  along.  He  had  been  compelled  to 
give  up  the  key  to  my  box-house.  He  had  been  engaged 
to  place  supplies  for  us  and  search  the  American  shores 
for  our  rescue.  Peary,  making  a  pretended  "Relief 
Station,"  forced  Koo-loo-ting-wah  from  his  position  as 
guardian  of  my  supplies,  and  forbade  him  to  engage  in 
any  effort  to  search  for  us,  and  absolutely  prohibited 


448  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

him  and  everybody  else,  including  Murphy,  Prichard 
and  Whitney,  from  engaging  in  any  kind  of  succor  at  a 
time  when  help  was  of  consequence.  Koo-loo-ting-wah 
was  liberally  paid  to  abandon  my  interests  (by  Mr. 
Peary's  orders,  from  my  supplies),  but,  like  Bartlett 
and  Whitney  and  Prichard  later,  he  condemned  Mr. 
Peary  for  his  unfair  acts.  When  asked  to  join  me  in 
the  long  journey  to  Upernavik,  he  said,  "Peari  an- 
nutu"  (Peary  will  be  mad.)  Koo-loo-ting-wah  was 
now  in  Peary's  service  at  my  expense,  and  I  insisted  that 
he  enter  my  service,  which  he  did.  Then  we  began  our 
preparations  for  the  southern  trip. 

Accompanied  by  Whitney,  I  went  to  Etah,  and  for 
this  part  of  the  journey  Murphy  grudgingly  gave  me  a 
scant  food  supply  for  a  week,  for  which  I  gave  him  a 
memorandum.  This  memorandum  was  afterwards 
published  by  Mr.  Peary  as  a  receipt,  so  displayed  as  to 
convey  the  idea  that  all  the  stolen  supplies  had  been 
replaced. 

At  Etah  was  a  big  cache  which  had  been  left  a 
year  before  by  Captain  Bernier,  the  commander  of  a 
northern  expedition  sent  out  by  the  Canadian  Gov- 
ernment, and  which  had  been  placed  in  charge 
of  Mr.  Whitney.  In  this  cache  were  food,  new  equip- 
ment, trading  material,  and  clean  underclothes  which 
Mrs.  Cook  had  sent  on  the  Canadian  expedition.  With 
this  new  store  of  suitable  supplies,  I  now  completed  my 
equipment  for  the  return  to  civilization.* 

*These  supplies  had,  fortunately,  been  left  in  the  care  of  Mr.  Whitney. 
In  the  months  that  followed,  Murphy  several  times  threatened  to  take 
these  things,  but  Whitney's  sense  of  justice  was  such  that  no  further 
pilfering  was  allowed. 

The  unbrotherly  tactics  which  Mr.  Peary  had  shown  to  Sverdrup  and 


ANNOATOK  TO  UPERNAVIK  449 

To  get  home  quickly,  I  concluded,  could  be  done 
best  by  going  to  the  Danish  settlements  in  Greenland, 
seven  hundred  miles  south,  and  thence  tp  Europe  by  an 
early  steamer.  From  Upernavik  mail  is  carried  in 
small  native  boats  to  Umanak,  where  there  is  direct 
communication  with  Europe  by  government  steamers. 
By  making  this  journey,  and  taking  a  fast  boat  to 
America,  I  calculated  I  could  reach  New  York  in  early 
July. 

Mr.  Whitney  expected  the  Erik  to  arrive  to  take 
him  south  in  the  following  August.  Going,  as  he 
planned,  into  Hudson  Bay,  he  expected  to  reach  New 
York  in  October.  Although  this  would  be  the  easiest 
and  safest  way  to  reach  home,  by  the  route  I  had  planned 
I  hoped  to  reach  New  York  four  months  earlier  than  the 
Erik  would. 

The  journey  from  Etah  to  Upernavik  is  about 
seven  hundred  miles — a  journey  as  long  and  nearly  as 
difficult  as  the  journey  to  the  North  Pole.  I  knew  it 
involved  difficulties  and  risks — the  climbing  of  moun- 
tains and  glaciers,  the  crossing  of  open  leads  of  water 
late  in  the  season,  when  the  ice  is  in  motion  and  snow  is 
falling,  and  the  dragging  of  sledges  through  slush  and 
water. 

Mr.  Whitney,  in  view  of  these  dangers,  offered  to 

other  explorers  were  here  copied  by  his  representative.  Captain  Bernier 
was  bound  for  the  American  coast,  to  explore  and  claim  for  Canada  the 
land  to  the  west.  He  desired  a  few  native  helpers.  There  were  at  Etah 
descendants  of  Eskimo  emigrants  from  the  very  land  which  Bernier 
aimed  to  explore.  These  men  were  anxious  to  return  to  their  fathers' 
land,  and  would  have  made  splendid  guides  for  Bernier.  Murphy  volun- 
teered to  ask  the  Eskimos  if  they  would  go.  He  went  ashore,  pretending 
that  he  would  try  to  secure  guides,  but,  in  reality,  he  never  asked  a  single 
Eskimo  to  join  Bernier.  Returning,  he  said  that  no  one  would  go.  Later 
he  boasted  to  Whitney  and  Prichard  of  the  intelligent  way  in  which  he 
had  deceived  Captain  Bernier.  Was  this  under  Mr.  Peary's  instructions? 


450  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

take  care  of  my  instruments,  notebooks  and  flag,  and 
take  them  south  on  his  ship.  I  knew  that  if  any  food 
were  lost  on  my  journey  it  might  be  replaced  by  game. 
Instruments  lost  in  glaciers  or  open  seas  could  not  be 
replaced.  The  instruments,  moreover,  had  served  their 
purposes.  The  corrections,  notes,  and  other  data  were 
also  no  longer  needed ;  all  my  observations  had  been  re- 
duced, and  the  corrections  were  valuable  only  for  a 
future  re-examination.  This  is  why  I  did  not  take  them 
with  me.  It  is  customary,  also,  to  leave  corrections  with 
instruments. 

In  the  box  which  I  gave  to  Mr.  Whitney  were 
packed  one  French  sextant;  one  surveying  compass, 
aluminum,  with  azimuth  attachment ;  one  artificial  hori- 
zon, set  in  a  thin  metal  frame  adjusted  by  spirit  levels 
and  thumbscrews;  one  aneroid  barometer,  aluminum; 
one  aluminum  case  with  maximum  and  minimum  spirit- 
thermometer;  other  thermometers,  and  also  one  liquid 
compass.  All  of  these  I  had  carried  with  me. 

Besides  these  were  left  other  instruments  used  about 
the  relief  station.  There  were  papers  giving  instru- 
mental corrections,  readings,  comparisons,  and  other 
notes;  a  small  diary,  mostly  of  loose  leaves,  containing 
some  direct  field  readings,  and  meteorological  data. 
These  were  packed  in  one  of  the  instrument  cases.  By 
special  request  of  Mr.  Whitney,  I  also  left  my  flag. 

In  addition,  I  placed  in  Mr.  Whitney's  charge  sev- 
eral big  cases  of  clothing  and  supplies  which  Mrs. 
Cook  had  sent,  also  ethnological  collections,  furs,  and 
geological  specimens.  In  one  of  these  boxes  were 
packed  the  instrument  cases  and  notes. 

Mr.   Whitney's   plans   later  were   changed.     His 


ANNOATOK  TO  UPERNAVIK  451 

ship,  the  Erik,  not  having  arrived  when  Peary  returned, 
Whitney  arranged  with  Peary  to  come  back  to  civiliza- 
tion on  the  latter's  ship,  the  Roosevelt.  As  I  learned 
afterwards,  when  the  Roosevelt  arrived  Mr.  Whitney 
took  from  one  of  my  packing  boxes  my  instruments  and 
packed  them  in  his  trunk.  He  was,  however,  pro- 
hibited from  carrying  my  things,  and  all  my  belong- 
ings were  consequently  left  at  the  mercy  of  the  weather 
and  the  natives  in  far-off  Greenland.  I  have  had  no 
means  of  hearing  from  them  since,  so  that  I  do  not 
know  what  has  become  of  them. 

About  Etah  and  Annoatok  and  on  my  eastward 
journey  few  notes  were  made.  As  well  as  I  can  remem- 
ber, I  left  Annoatok  some  time  during  the  third  week  of 
April.  On  leaving  Whitney,  I  promised  to  send  him 
dogs  and  guides  for  his  prospective  hunting  trip.  I  also 
promised  to  get  for  him  furs  for  a  suitable  winter  suit — 
because,  according  to  Mr.  Peary's  autocratic  methods, 
he  had  been  denied  the  privilege  of  trading  for  himself. 
He  was  not  allowed  to  gather  trophies,  or  to  purchase 
absolutely  necessary  furs,  nor  was  he  accorded  the  cour- 
tesy of  arranging  for  guides  and  dogs  with  the  natives 
for  his  ambition  to  get  big  game.  All  of  this  I  was  to 
arrange  for  Whitney  as  I  passed  the  villages  farther 
south. 

In  crossing  by  the  overland  route,  over  Crystal 
Palace  Glacier  to  Sontag  Bay,  we  were  caught  in  a  vio- 
lent gale,  which  buried  us  in  drifts  on  the  highlands. 
Descending  to  the  sea,  we  entered  a  new  realm  of 
coming  summer  joys. 

Moving  along  to  Neurke,  we  found  a  big  snow- 
house  village.  All  had  gathered  for  the  spring  walrus 


452  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

chase.  Many  animals  had  been  caught,  and  the  hunt- 
ers were  in  a  gluttonous  stupor  from  continued  over- 
feeding. It  was  not  long  before  we,  too,  filled  up,  and 
succumbed  to  similar  pleasures. 

My  boys  were  here,  and  the  principal  pastime  was 
native  gossip  about  the  North  Pole. 

Arriving  among  their  own  people  here,  Ah-we-lah 
and  E-tuk-i-shook  recounted  their  remarkable  journey. 
They  had,  of  course,  no  definite  idea  of  where  they  had 
been,  but  told  of  the  extraordinary  journey  of  seven 
moons;  of  their  reaching  a  place  where  there  was  no 
game  and  no  life;  of  their  trailing  over  the  far-off  seas 
where  the  sun  did  not  dip  at  night,  and  of  their  hunting, 
on  our  return,  with  slingshots,  string  traps,  and  arrows. 
These  were  their  strong  and  clear  impressions.* 


*I  now  learned,  also,  that  the  Eskimos  had  told  their  tribesmen  of 
their  arrival  at  the  mysterious  "Big  Nail,"  which,  of  course,  meant  less 
to  them  than  the  hardship  and  unique  methods  of  hunting. 

Among  themselves  the  Eskimos  have  an  intimate  way  of  conveying 
things,  a  method  of  expression  and  meaning  which  an  outsider  never  grasps. 
At  most,  white  men  can  understand  only  a  selected  and  more  simple  lan- 
guage with  which  the  Eskimos  convey  their  thoughts.  This  partly  accounts 
for  the  unreliability  of  any  testimony  which  a  white  man  extracts  from  them. 
There  is  also  to  be  considered  an  innate  desire  on  the  part  of  these  simple 
people  to  answer  any  question  in  a  manner  which  they  think  will  please. 
In  all  Indian  races  this  desire  to  please  is  notoriously  stronger  than  a 
sense  of  truth.  The  fact  that  my  Eskimos,  when  later  questioned  as  to 
my  whereabouts,  are  reported  to  have  answered  that  I  had  not  gone  far 
out  of  sight  of  land,  was  due  partly  to  my  instructions  and  partly  to  this 
inevitable  wish  to  answer  in  a  pleasing  way. 

While  they  spoke  among  themselves  of  having  reached  the  "Big  Nail," 
they  also  said — what  they  later  repeated  to  Mr.  Peary — that  they  had 
passed  few  days  beyond  the  sight  of  land,  a  delusion  caused  by  mirages, 
in  which,  to  prevent  any  panic,  I  had  with  good  intentions  encouraged 
an  artificial  belief  in  a  nearness  to  land. 

But  we  were  for  weeks  enshrouded  in  dense  fogs,  where  nothing  could 
be  seen.  The  natives  everywhere  had  heard  of  this,  and  inquired  about  it. 
Why  has  Mr.  Peary  suppressed  this  important  information?  We  traveled 
and  camped  on  the  pack  for  "seven  moons."  Why  was  this  omitted?  We 
reached  a  place  where  the  sun  did  not  dip  at  night;  where  there  was  not 
enough  difference  in  the  height  of  the  day  and  night  sun  to  give  the 
Eskimo  his  usual  sense  of  direction.  Why  was  this  fact  ignored? 


ANNOATOK  TO  UPERNAVIK  453 

From  Nenrke  we  crossed  Murchison  Sound,  along 
the  leads  where  the  walrus  was  being  hunted,  and  from 
there  we  set  a  course  for  the  eastern  point  of  Northum- 
berland Island. 

We  next  entered  Inglefield  Gulf.  Our  party  had 
grown.  Half  of  the  natives  were  eager  to  join  us  on  a 
pilgrimage  to  the  kindly  and  beloved  Danes  of  Southern 
Greenland;  but,  because  of  the  advancing  season,  the 
marches  must  be  forced,  and  because  a  large  sled  train 
hinders  rapid  advancement,  I  reduced  the  numbers 
and  changed  the  personnel  of  my  party  as  better  helpers 
offered  services. 

From  a  point  near  Itiblu  we  ascended  the  blue 
slopes  of  a  snow-free  glacier,  and  after  picking  a  dan- 
gerous footing  around  precipitous  cliffs,  we  rose  to  the 
clouds  and  deep  snows  of  the  inland  ice.  Here,  for 
twenty-four  hours,  we  struggled  through  deep  snow, 
with  only  the  wind  to  give  direction  to  our  trail.  De- 
scending from  this  region  of  perpetual  mist  and  storm, 
we  came  down  to  the  sea  in  Booth  Sound.  From  here, 
after  a  good  rest,  over  splendid  ice,  in  good  weather,  we 
entered  Wolstenholm  Sound.  At  Oomonoi  there  was 
a  large  gathering  of  natives,  and  among  these  we 
rested  and  fed  up  in  preparation  for  the  long,  haz- 
ardous trip  which  lay  before  us. 

In  this  locality,  the  Danish  Literary  Expedition, 
under  the  late  Mylius  Ericksen,  had  wintered.  Their 
forced  march  northward  from  Uppernavik  proved  so 
desperate  that  they  were  unable  to  carry  important 
necessaries. 

But  the  natives,  with  characteristic  generosity,  had 
supplied  the  Danes  with  the  meat  for  food  and  the  fat 


454  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

for  fuel,  which  kept  them  alive  during  dangerous  and 
trying  times.* 

We  now  started  for  Cape  York.  My-ah,  Ang-ad- 
loo  and  I-o-ko-ti  were  accepted  as  permanent  members 
of  my  party.  All  of  this  party  was,  curiously  enough, 
hostile  to  Mr.  Peary,  and  the  general  trend  of  conversa- 
tion was  a  bitter  criticism  of  the  way  the  people  had  been 
fleeced  of  furs  and  ivory;  how  a  party  had  been  left  to 
die  of  cold  and  hunger  at  Fort  Conger;  how,  at  Cape 
Sabine,  many  died  of  a  sickness  which  had  been  brought 
among  them,  and  how  Dr.  Dedrick  was  not  allowed  to 
save  their  lives ;  how  a  number  had  been  torn  from  their 
homes  and  taken  to  New  York,  where  they  had  died  of 
barbarous  ill-treatment;  how  their  great  "Iron  Stone," 
their  only  source  of  iron  for  centuries,  the  much-prized 
heritage  of  their  nation,  had  been  stolen  from  the  point 
we  were  now  nearing;  and  so  on,  throughout  a  long  line 
of  other  abuses.  But,  at  the  time,  all  of  this  bitterness 
seemed  to  soften  my  own  resentment,  and  I  began  to 
cherish  a  forgiving  spirit  toward  Mr.  Peary.  After  all, 
thought  I,  I  have  been  successful;  let  us  have  an  end  of 
discord  and  seek  a  brighter  side  of  life. 

Now  I  began  to  think  for  the  first  time  of  the  public 
aspect  of  my  homegoing.  Heretofore  my  anticipations 
had  been  centered  wholly  in  the  joys  of  a  family  reunion, 
but  now  the  thought  was  slowly  forced  as  to  the  attitude 

*  In  appreciation  of  this  kind  helpfulness,  the  Danes  later  sent  a 
special  ship  loaded  with  presents,  which  were  left  for  distribution  among 
the  good-natured  Eskimos  who  had  helped  Ericksen.  Mr.  Peary  came  along 
after  the  Danes  had  turned  their  backs,  and  picked  from  the  Danish  pres- 
ents such  things  as  appealed  to  his  fancy,  thus  depriving  the  Eskimos  of 
the  merited  return  for  their  kindness.  What  right  had  Mr.  Peary  to 
take  these  things?  The  Danes,  who  have  since  placed  a  mission  station 
here,  in  continuation  of  their  policy  to  guard  and  protect  the  Eskimos,  are 
awaiting  an  answer  to  this  question  to-day. 


ANNOATOK  TO  UPERN4VIK  455 

which  others  would  take  towards  me.  In  the  wildest 
flights  of  my  imagination  I  never  dreamed  of  any 
world-wide  interest  in  the  Pole.  Again  I  desire  to 
emphasize  the  fact  that  every  movement  I  have  made 
disproves  the  allegation  that  I  planned  to  perpetrate  a 
gigantic  fraud  upon  the  world.  Men  had  been  seeking 
the  North  Pole  for  years,  and  at  no  time  had  any  of 
these  many  explorers  aroused  any  general  interest  in 
his  expedition  or  the  results. 

Millions  of  money,  hundreds  of  lives,  had  been  sac- 
rificed. The  complex  forces  of  great  nations  had  been 
arrayed  unsuccessfully.  I  had  believed  the  thing  could 
be  done  by  simpler  methods,  without  the  sacrifice  of 
life,  without  using  other  people's  money;  and,  with  this 
conviction,  had  gone  north.  I  now  came  south,  with  no 
expectations  of  reward  except  such  as  wrould  come  from 
a  simple  success  in  a  purely  private  undertaking. 

I  wish  to  emphasize  that  I  regarded  my  entire  ex- 
perience as  something  purely  personal.  I  supposed 
that  the  newspapers  would  announce  my  return,  and 
that  there  would  be  a  three  days'  breath  of  attention,  and 
that  that  would  be  all.  So  far  as  I  was  personally  con- 
cerned,  my  chief  thought  was  one  of  satisfaction  at  hav- 
ing satisfied  myself,  and  an  intense  longing  for  home. 

We  camped  at  Cape  York.  Before  us  was  the 
great  white  expanse  of  Melville  Bay  to  the  distant 
Danish  shores.  Few  men  had  ever  ventured  over  this. 
What  luck  was  in  store  for  us  could  not  be  guessed. 
But  we  were  ready  for  every  emergency.  We  moved 
eastward  to  an  island  where  the  natives  greeted  us  with 
enthusiasm,  and  then  we  started  over  treacherous  ice 
southward.  The  snow  was  not  deep;  the  ice  proved 


456  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

fairly  smooth.  The  seals,  basking  in  the  new  summer 
sun,  augmented  our  supplies.  Frequent  bear  tracks 
added  the  spirit  of  the  chase,  which  doubled  our  speed. 
In  two  days  we  had  the  "Devil's  Thumb"  to  our  left,  and 
at  the  end  of  three  and  a  half  days  the  cheer  of  Danish 
cliffs  and  semi-civilized  Eskimos  came  under  our  eyes. 

The  route  from  Annoatok  to  this  point,  following 
the  circuitous  twists  over  sea  and  land,  was  almost  as 
long  as  that  from  Annoatok  to  the  Pole,  but  we  had  cov- 
ered it  in  less  than  a  month.  With  a  record  march 
across  Melville  Bay,  we  had  crossed  a  long  line  of  trou- 
ble, in  which  Mylius  Ericksen  and  his  companions  nearly 
succumbed  after  weeks  of  frosty  torture.  We  had  done 
it  in  a  few  days,  and  in  comfort,  with  the  luxury  of 
abundant  food  gathered  en  route. 

Behind  the  Danish  archipelago,  traveling  was  good 
and  safe.  As  we  went  along,  from  village  to  village, 
the  Eskimos  told  the  story  of  the  Polar  conquest.  Rap- 
idly we  pushed  along  to  Tassuasak,  which  we  reached 
in  the  middle  of  May.  This  is  one  of  the  small  trading 
posts  belonging  to  the  district  of  Upernavik. 

At  Tassuasak  I  met  Charles  Dahl,  a  congenial 
Danish  official,  with  whom  I  stayed  a  week.  He  spoke 
only  Danish,  which  I  did  not  understand.  Despite  the 
fact  that  our  language  was  unintelligible,  we  talked  until 
two  or  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  somehow  conveying 
our  thoughts,  and  when  he  realized  what  I  told  him  he 
took  my  hand,  offering  warm,  whole-souled  Norse 
appreciation. 

Here  I  secured  for  Mr.  Whitney  tobacco  and  other 
needed  supplies.  For  the  Eskimos,  various  presents 
were  bought,  all  of  which  were  packed  on  the  returning 


ANNOATOK  TO  UPERNAVIK  457 


sleds.  Then  the  time  arrived  to  bid  the  final  adieu  to 
my  faithful  wild  men  of  the  Far  North.  Tears  took  the 
place  of  words  in  that  parting. 

By  sledge  and  oomiak  (skin  boat)  I  now  continued 
my  journey  to  Upernavik. 

Upernavik  is  one  of  the  largest  Danish  settle- 
ments in  Greenland  and  one  of  the  most  important  trad- 
ing posts.  It  is  a  small  town  with  a  population  of  about 
three  hundred  Eskimos,  who  live  in  box-shaped  huts  of 
turf.  The  town  affords  residence  for  about  six  Danish 
officials,  who  live,  with  their  families,  in  comfortable 
houses. 

I  reached  there  early  one  morning  about  May  20, 
1909,  and  went  at  once  to  the  house  of  Governor  Kraul. 
The  governor  himself — a  tall,  bald-headed,  dignified 
man,  a  bachelor,  about  fifty  years  of  age,  of  genial  man- 
ner and  considerable  literary  and  scientific  attain- 
ments— answered  my  knock  on  the  door.  He  admitted 
me  hospitably,  and  then  looked  me  over  from  head  to 
foot. 

I  was  a  hard-looking  visitor.  I  wore  an  old  seal- 
skin coat,  worn  bearskin  trousers,  stockings  of  hareskin 
showing  above  torn  seal  boots.  I  was  reasonably  dirty. 
My  face  was  haggard  and  bronzed,  my  hair  was  uncut, 
long  and  straggling.  However,  I  felt  reassured  in  a 
bath  and  clean  underclothing  secured  a  week  before  at 
Tassuasak.  Later  these  clothes  were  replaced  by  new 
clothes  given  me  by  Governor  Kraul,  some  of  which  I 
wore  on  my  trip  to  Copenhagen.  My  appearance  was 
such  that  I  was  not  surprised  by  the  governor's  ques- 
tion :  "Have  you  any  lice  on  you  ? ' ' 

Some  years  before  he  had  entertained  some  Arctic 


458  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

pilgrims,  and  a  peculiar  breed  of  parasites  remained 
to  plague  the  village  for  a  long  time.  I  convinced  him 
that,  in  spite  of  my  unprepossessing  appearance,  he 
was  safe  in  sheltering  me. 

At  his  house  I  had  all  the  luxuries  of  a  refined  home 
with  a  large  library  at  my  disposal.  I  had  also  a  large, 
comfortable  feather-bed  with  clean  sheets.  I  slept  for 
hours  every  day,  devoting  about  four  or  five  hours  to 
my  work  on  my  notes. 

At  breakfast  I  told  Governor  Kraul  briefly  of  my 
journey,  and  although  he  was  polite  and  pleasant,  I 
could  see  that  he  was  skeptical  as  to  my  having  reached 
the  Pole.  I  remained  with  him  a  month,  using  his  pens 
and  paper  putting  the  finishing  touches  on  my  narra- 
tive— on  which  I  had  done  much  work  at  Cape  Sparbo. 
My  notes  and  papers  were  scattered  about,  and  Gov- 
ernor Kraul  read  them,  and  as  he  read  them  his  doubts 
were  dispelled  and  he  waxed  enthusiastic. 

Governor  Kraul  had  had  no  news  of  the  inside 
world  for  about  a  year.  He  was  as  anxious  as  I  was  for 
letters  and  papers.  I  went  over  his  last  year's  news 
with  a  good  deal  of  interest.  While  thus  engaged,  early 
one  foggy  morning,  a  big  steamer  came  into  port.  It 
was  the  steam  whaler  Morning  of  Dundee.  Her  master, 
Captain  Adams,  came  ashore  with  letters  and  news.  He 
recited  the  remarkable  journey  of  Shackleton  to  the 
South  Pole  as  his  opening  item  in  the  cycle  of  the  year's 
incidents.  After  that  he  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that 
England  had  become  Americanized  in  its  politics,  and 
after  recounting  the  year's  luck  in  whaling,  sealing  and 
fishing,  he  then  informed  me  that  from  America  the 
greatest  news  was  the  success  of  "The  Merry  Widow" 


ANNOATOK  TO  UPERNAVIK  459 

and  "The  Dollar  Princess."  I  was  invited  aboard  to 
eat  the  first  beefsteak  and  first  fresh  civilized  food  that 
I  had  eaten  in  two  years.  I  then  told  him  of  my  Polar 
conquest.  He  was  keenly  interested  in  my  story,  all 
of  my  reports  seeming  to  confirm  his  own  preconceived 
ideas  of  conditions  about  the  Pole.  When  I  went  ashore 
I  took  a  present  of  a  bag  of  potatoes.  To  Governor 
Kraul  and  myself  these  potatoes  proved  to  be  the  great- 
est delicacy,  for  to  both  the  flavor  and  real  fresh,  mealy 
potatoes  gave  our  meals  the  finishing  touches  of  a  fine 
dessert. 

I  gave  Captain  Adams  some  information  about  new 
hunting  grounds  which,  as  he  left,  he  said  would  be 
tried.* 

Life  at  Upernavik  was  interesting.  Among  other 
things,  we  noted  the  total  eclipse  of  the  sun  on  June  17. 
According  to  our  time,  it  began  in  the  evening  at 
eighteen  minutes  past  seven  and  ended  ten  minutes  after 
nine. 

For  a  number  of  days  the  natives  had  looked  with 
anxiety  upon  the  coming  of  the  mysterious  darkness 
attending  the  eclipse,  for  now  we  were  in  a  land  of 
anxiety  and  uneasiness.  It  was  said  that  storms  would 
follow  each  other,  displaying  the  atmospheric  rage ;  that 


*When  Captain  Adams  arrived  off  the  haunts  of  the  northernmost 
Eskimos,  he  sent  ashore  a  letter  to  be  passed  along  to  Mr.  Peary,  as  he 
was  expected  to  return  south  during  that  summer.  In  his  letter  Captain 
Adams  told  of  my  attainment  of  the  Pole.  The  letter  got  into  Mr. 
Peary's  hands  before  he  returned  to  Labrador.  With  this  letter  in  his 
pocket,  Mr.  Peary  gave  as  his  principal  reason  for  doubting  my  success 
that  nobody  else  had  been  told  that  I  had  reached  the  Pole.  I  told  Whit- 
ney, I  had  told  Pritchard — thus  Peary's  charge  was  proven  false  later.  But 
why  did  he  suppress  the  information  which  Captain  Adams'  letter  con- 
tained? With  this  letter  in  his  pocket,  why  did  Mr.  Peary  say  that  no 
one  had  been  told? 


460  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

seals  could  not  be  sought,  and  that  all  good  people  should 
pray.  Although  a  violent  southwest  gale  did  rush  by, 
the  last  days  before  the  eclipse  were  clear  and  warm. 

Governor  Kraul  suggested  a  camp  on  the  high 
rocks  east.  Mr.  Anderson,  the  governor's  assistant,  and 
I  joined  in  the  expedition.  We  took  smoked  and  amber 
glasses,  a  pen  and  paper,  a  camera  and  field  glasses.  A 
little  disk  was  cut  out  of  the  northern  side  of  the  sun 
before  we  started.  There  was  no  wind,  and  the  sky  was 
cloudless.  A  better  opportunity  could  not  have  been 
afforded.  It  ha'd  been  quite  warm.  The  chirp  of  the 
snow  bunting  and  the  buzz  of  bees  gave  the  first  joyous 
rebound  of  the  short  Arctic  summer.  Small  sand-flies 
rose  in  clouds,  and  the  waters  glittered  with  midsummer 
incandescence.  Small  groups  of  natives,  in  gorgeous 
attire,  gathered  in  many  places,  and  occasionally  took 
a  sly  glance  at  the  sun  as  if  something  was  about  to 
happen.  They  talked  in  muffled  undertones. 

When  one-third  of  the  sun's  disk  was  obscured  it 
was  impossible  to  see  the  cut  circle  with  the  unprotected 
eye.  It  grew  perceptibly  dark.  The  natives  quieted 
and  moved  toward  the  church.  The  birds  ceased  to 
sing;  the  flies  sank  to  the  ground.  With  the  failing 
light  the  air  quickly  chilled,  the  bright  contour  of  the 
land  blurred,  the  deep  blue  of  the  sea  faded  to  a  dull 
purple-blue  seemingly  lighter,  but  the  midday  splendor 
of  high  lights  and  shadows  was  lost.  The  burning  glitter 
of  the  waters  under  the  sun  now  quickly  changed  to  a 
silvery  glow.  The  alabaster  and  ultramarine  blue  of 
the  icebergs  was  veiled  in  gray. 

When  a  thread  of  light  spread  the  cut  out,  we  knew 
that  the  total  eclipse  was  over.  In  what  seemed  like  a 


'MILES    AND    MILES    OI^    DESOLATION 

HOMEWARD    BOUND 
Coijyriyht,   1909,   "Ncic    York   Herald   Co." 


ANNOATOK  TO  UPERNAVIK        461 

r 

few  seconds  the  gloom  of  night  brightened  to  the  sparkle 
of  noon. 

At  the  darkest  time  the  natives  had  called  for  open 
church  doors,  and  a  sense  of  immediate  danger  came  over 
the  savage  horizon  with  the  force  of  a  panic.  A  single 
star  was  visible  for  about  a  minute  before  and  after  the 
total  eclipse.  A  slight  salmon  flush  remained  along  the 
western  horizon;  otherwise  the  sky  varied  in  tones  of 
purple-blue. 

After  the  sea  had  brightened  to  its  normal  luster, 
Governor  Kraul  gave  the  entire  native  settlement  a 
feast  of  figs. 

About  June  20,  the  Danish  supply  ship,  Godthaab, 
with  Captain  Henning  Shoubye  in  command,  arrived 
from  South  Greenland.  Inspector  Dougaard  Jensen 
and  Handelschef  Weche  were  aboard  on  a  tour  of 
inspection  along  the  Danish  settlements.  A  corps  of 
scientific  observers  were  also  aboard.  Among  these 
were  Professors  Thompsen  and  Steensby  and  Dr. 
Krabbe.  Governor  Kraul  asked  me  to  accompany  him 
aboard  the  Godthaab.  Thus  I  first  met  this  group  of 
men,  who  afterwards  did  so  much  to  make  my  journey 
southward  to  Copenhagen  interesting  and  agreeable. 
The  Governor  told  them  of  the  conquest  of  the  Pole. 
At  the  time  their  interest  in  the  news  was  not  very 
marked,  but  later  every  phase  of  the  entire  trip  was 
thoroughly  discussed. 

In  a  few  days  the  Godthaab  sailed  from  Upernavik 
to  Umanak,  and  I  took  passage  on  her.  Captain  Shou- 
bye quietly  and  persistently  questioned  me  as  to  details 
of  my  trip.  Apparently  he  became  convinced  that  I 
was  stating  facts,  for  when  we  arrived  at  Umanak,  the 


462  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

social  metropolis  of  North  Greenland,  the  people  enthu- 
siastically received  me,  having  been  informed  of  my  feat 
by  the  captain. 

After  coaling  at  a  place  near  Umanak  we  started 
south. 

At  the  "King's  Guest  House"  in  Eggedesminde, 
the  only  hotel  in  Greenland,  I  met  Dr.  Norman-Han- 
sen,  a  scientist,  with  whom  I  talked.  He  questioned 
me,  and  a  fraternal  confidence  was  soon  established. 

Later  the  Godthaab,  which  took  the  missionary 
expedition  to  the  northernmost  Eskimo  settlement  at 
North  Star  Bay  and  then  returned,  arrived  from  Cape 
York  with  Knud  Rassmussen  and  other  Danes  aboard 
They  had  a  story  that  my  two  Eskimos  had  said  I  had 
taken  them  to  the  "Big  Nail." 


FROM  GREENLAND  TO  COPENHAGEN 

FOREWARNING    OF    THE    POLAR    CONTROVERSY BANQUET 

AT   EGGEDESMINDE ON    BOARD   THE    HANS   EGEDE 

—CABLEGRAMS  SENT  FROM  LERWICK THE  OVATION 

AT    COPENHAGEN BEWILDERED    AMIDST    THE    GEN- 
ERAL     ENTHUSIASM PEARY^S      FIRST       MESSAGES 

EMBARK  ON  OSCAR  II  FOR  NEW  YORK 

XXXI 

AT  THE  DANISH  METROPOLIS 

At  Eggedesminde  was  given  the  first  banquet  in 
my  honor.  At  the  table  were  about  twenty  people. 
Knud  Rassmussen,  the  writer,  among  others  spoke.  In 
an  excited  talk  in  Danish,  mixed  with  English  and  Ger- 
man, he  foretold  the  return  of  Mr.  Peary  and  prophesied 
discord.  This  made  little  impression  at  the  time  and 
was  recalled  only  by  later  events. 

At  this  point  I  wish  to  express  my  gratitude  and 
appreciation  of  the  universal  courtesy  of  which  I  was  the 
recipient  at  every  Danish  settlement  in  my  southward 
progress  along  the  coast  of  Greenland. 

At  Eggedesminde  Inspector  Daugaard-Jensen  en- 
deavored to  secure  an  idle  walrus  schooner  for  me.  By 
this  I  hoped  to  get  to  Labrador  and  thence  to  New 
York.  This  involved  considerable  official  delay,  and  I 


464  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

estimated  I  could  make  better  time  by  going  to  Copen- 
hagen on  the  Hans  Egede.  Although  every  berth  on 
this  boat,  when  it  arrived,  was  engaged,  Inspector 
Daugaard-Jensen,  with  the  same  characteristic  kind- 
ness and  courtesy  shown  me  by  all  the  Danes,  secured 
for  me  comfortable  quarters. 

On  board  were  a  number  of  scientific  men  and 
Danish  correspondents.  As  the  story  of  my  quest  had 
spread  along  the  Greenland  coast,  and  as  conflicting 
reports  might  be  sent  out,  Inspector  Daugaard-Jensen 
suggested  that  I  cable  a  first  account  to  the  world. 

The  anxiety  of  the  newspaper  correspondents  on 
board  gave  me  the  idea  that  my  story  might  have  con- 
siderable financial  value.  I  was  certainly  in  need  of 
money.  I  had  only  forty  or  fifty  dollars  and  I  needed 
clothing  and  money  for  my  passage  from  Copenhagen 
to  New  York. 

The  suggestions  and  assistance  of  Inspector  Dau- 
gaard-Jensen were  very  helpful.  Iceland  and  the  Faroe 
Islands,  frequent  ports  of  call  for  the  Danish  steamers, 
because  of  a  full  passenger  list  and  the  absence  of  com- 
mercial needs,  were  not  visited  by  the  Hans  Egede  on 
this  return  trip.  The  captain  decided  to  put  into  Ler- 
wick,  in  the  Shetland  Islands,  so  that  I  could  send  my 
message. 

I  prepared  a  story  of  about  2,000  words,  and 
went  ashore  at  Lerwick.  No  one  but  myself  and  a  rep- 
resentative of  the  captain  was  allowed  to  land.  We 
swore  the  cable  operator  to  secrecy,  sent  several  official 
and  private  messages,  and  one  to  James  Gordon  Ben- 
nett briefly  telling  of  my  discovery.  As  the  operator  re- 
fused to  be  responsible  for  the  press  message,  it  was 


GREENLAND  TO  COPENHAGEN       465 

left  with  the.  Danish  consul.  To  Mr.  Bennett  I  cabled: 
"Message  left  in  care  of  Danish  consul,  2,000  words. 
For  it  $3,000  expected.  If  you  want  it,  send  for  it." 

Our  little  boat  pulled  back  to  the  Hans  Egede,  and 
the  ship  continued  on  her  journey  to  Copenhagen.  Two 
days  passed.  On  board  we  talked  of  my  trip  as  quite  a 
commonplace  thing.  I  made  some  appointments  for  a 
short  stay  in  Copenhagen. 

Off  the  Skaw,  the  northernmost  point  of  Den- 
mark, a  Danish  man-of-war  came  alongside  us.  There 
was  a  congratulatory  message  from  the  Minister  of 
State.  This  greatly  surprised  me. 

Meanwhile  a  motor  boat  puffed  over  the  unsteady 
sea  and  a  half  dozen  seasick  newspaper  men,  looking 
like  wet  cats,  jumped  over  the  rails.  They  had  been 
permitted  to  board  on  the  pretext  that  they  had  a  mes- 
sage from  the  American  Minister,  Dr.  Egan.  I  took 
them  to  my  cabin  and  asked  whether  the  New  York 
Herald  had  printed  my  cable.  The  correspondent  of  the 
Politiken  drew  out  a  Danish  paper  in  which  I  recog- 
nized the  story.  I  talked  with  the  newspaper  men  for 
five  minutes  and  my  prevailing  impression  was  that  they 
did  not  know  what  they  wanted.  They  told  me  Fleet 
Street  had  moved  to  Copenhagen.  I  confess  all  of  this 
seemed  foolish  at  the  time. 

They  told  me  that  dinners  and  receptions  awaited 
me  at  Copenhagen.  That  puzzled  me,  and  when  I 
thought  of  my  clothes  I  became  distressed.  I  wrore  a 
dirty,  oily  suit.  I  had  only  one  set  of  clean  linen  and 
one  ca*p.  After  consulting  with  the  Inspector  we 
guessed  at  my  measurements,  and  a  telegram  was  writ- 
ten to  a  tailor  at  Copenhagen  to  have  some  clothing 


466  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

ready  for  me.  At  Elsinore  cables  began  to  arrive,  and 
thence  onward  I  became  a  helpless  leaf  on  a  whirlwind 
of  excitement.  I  let  the  people  about  plan  and  think 
for  me,  and  had  a  say  in  nothing.  A  cable  from  Mr. 
Bennett  saying  that  he  had  never  paid  $3,000  so  will- 
ingly gave  me  pleasure.  There  was  relief  in  this,  too, 
for  my  expenses  at  the  hotel  in  Eggedesminde  and  on 
the  Hans  Egede  were  unpaid. 

At  Elsinore  many  people  came  aboard  with  whom 
I  shook  hands  and  muttered  inanities  in  response  to 
congratulations.  Reporters  who  were  not  seasick 
thronged  the  ship,  each  one  insisting  on  a  special  inter- 
view. Why  should  I  be  interviewed?  It  seemed  silly 
to  make  such  a  fuss. 

Cablegrams  and  letters  piled  in  my  cabin.  With 
my  usual  methodical  desire  to  read  and  answer  all  com- 
munications I  sat  down  to  this  task,  which  soon  seemed 
hopeless.  I  was  becoming  intensely  puzzled,  and  a 
not-knowing-where-I-was-at  sensation  confused  me. 
I  did  not  have  a  minute  for  reflection,  and  before  I  could 
approximate  my  situation,  we  arrived  at  Copenhagen. 

Like  a  bolt  from  the  blue,  there  burst  about  me  the 
clamor  of  Copenhagen's  ovation.  I  was  utterly  be- 
wildered by  it.  I  found  no  reason  in  my  mind  for  it. 
About  the  North  Pole  I  had  never  felt  such  exultation. 
I  could  not  bring  myself  to  feel  what  all  this  indicated, 
that  I  had  accomplished  anything  extraordinarily  mar- 
velous. For  days  I  could  not  grasp  the  reason  for  the 
world-excitement. 

When  I  went  on  deck,  as  we  approached  the  city, 
I  saw  far  in  the  distance  flags  flying.  Like  a  darting 
army  of  water  bugs,  innumerable  craft  of  all  kind  were 


GREENLAND  TO  COPENHAGEN      467 

leaping  toward  us  on  the  sunlit  water.  Tugs  and 
motors,  rowboats  and  sailboats,  soon  surrounded  and 
followed  us.  The  flags  of  all  nations  dangled  on  the 
decorated  craft.  People  shouted,  it  seemed,  in  every 
tongue.  Wave  after  wave  of  cheering  rolled  over  the 
water.  Horns  blew,  there  was  the  sound  of  music,  guns 
exploded.  All  about,  balancing  on  unsteady  craft,  their 
heads  hooded  in  black,  were  the  omnipresent  moving- 
picture-machine  operators  at  work.  All  this  passed  as  a 
moving  picture  itself,  I  standing  there,  dazed,  simply 
dazed. 

Amidst  increasing  cheering  the  Hans  Egede 
dropped  anchor.  Prince  Christian,  the  crown  prince, 
Prince  Waldemar,  King  Frederick's  brother,  United 
States  Minister  Egan,  and  many  other  distinguished 
gentlemen  in  good  clothes  greeted  me.  That  they  were 
people  who  wore  good  clothes  was  my  predominant  im- 
pression. Mentally  I  compared  their  well-tailored  gar- 
ments with  my  dirty,  soiled,  bagged-at-the-knees  suit. 
I  doffed  my  old  dirty  cap,  and  as  I  shook  hands  with 
the  Prince  Christian  and  Prince  Waldemar,  tall,  splen- 
did men,  I  felt  very  sheepish.  While  all  this  was  going 
on,  I  think  I  forgot  about  the  North  Pole.  I  was  most 
uncomfortable. 

For  a  while  it  was  impossible  to  get  ashore.  Along 
the  pier  to  which  we  drew,  the  crowd  seemed  to  drag 
into  the  water.  About  me  was  a  babel  of  sound,  of 
which  I  heard,  the  whole  time,  no  intelligible  word.  I 
was  pushed,  lifted  ashore,  the  crown  prince  before  me, 
William  T.  Stead,  the  English  journalist,  behind.  I 
almost  fell,  trying  to  get  a  footing.  On  both  sides  the 
press  of  people  closed  upon  us.  I  fought  like  a  swimmer 


468  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

struggling  for  life,  and,  becoming  helpless,  was  pushed 
and  carried  along/  I  walked  two  steps  on  the  ground 
and  five  on  the  air.  Somebody  grabbed  my  hat,  an- 
other pulled  off  a  cuff,  others  got  buttons;  but  flowers 
came  in  exchange.  At  times  Stead  held  me  from  fall- 
ing. I  was  weak  and  almost  stifled.  On  both  sides  of 
me  rushed  a  flood  of  blurred  human  faces.  I  was  in  a 
delirium.  I  ceased  to  think,  was  unable  to  think,  for 
hours. 

We  finally  reached  the  Meteorological  building.  I 
was  pushed  through  the  iron  gates.  I  heard  them 
slammed  behind  me.  I  paused  to  breathe.  Somebody 
mentioned  something  about  a  speech.  "My  God!"  I 
muttered.  I  could  no  more  think  than  fly.  I  was  pushed 
onto  a  balcony.  I  remember  opening  my  mouth,  but 
I  do  not  know  a  word  I  said.  There  followed  a  lot  of 
noise.  I  suppose  it  was  applause.  Emerging  from  the 
black,  lonely  Arctic  night,  the  contrast  of  that  rushing 
flood  of  human  faces  staggered  me.  Yes,  there  was  an- 
other sensation — that  of  being  a  stranger  among  strange 
people,  in  a  city  where,  however  much  I  might  be  hon- 
ored, I  had  no  old-time  friend.  This  curiously  de- 
pressed me. 

Through  a  back  entrance  I  was  smuggled  into  an 
automobile.  The  late  Commander  Hovgaard,  a  member 
of  the  Nordenskjold  expedition,  took  charge  of  affairs, 
and  I  was  taken  to  the  Phoenix  Hotel.  Apart- 
ments had  also  been  reserved  for  me  at  the  Bristol  and 
Angleterre,  but  I  had  no  voice  in  the  plans,  for  which  I 
was  glad. 

I  was  shown  to  my  room  and,  while  washing  my 
face  and  hands,  had  a  moment  to  think.  "What  the 


GREENLAND  TO  COPENHAGEN       469 

devil  is  it  all  about?"  I  remember  repeating  to  myself. 
I  was  simply  dazed.  A  barber  arrived ;  I  submitted  to  a 
shave.  Meanwhile  a  manicure  girl  appeared  and  took 
charge  of  my  hands.  Through  the  bewildered  days  that 
followed,  the  thought  of  this  girl,  like  the  obsession  of  a 
delirious  man,  followed  me.  I  had  not  paid  or  tipped 
her,  and  with  the  girl's  image  a  perturbed  feeling  per- 
sisted, "Here  is  some  one  I  have  wronged."  I  repeated 
that  over  and  over  again.  This  shows  the  overwrought 
state  of  my  mind  at  the  time. 

Next  the  bedroom  was  a  large,  comfortable  recep- 
tion room,  already  filled  with  flowers.  Beyond  that  was 
a  large  room  in  which  I  found  many  suits  of  clothes, 
some  smaller,  some  bigger  than  the  estimated  size  wired 
from  the  ship.  At  this  moment  there  came  Mr.  Ralph 
L.  Shainwald — an  old  friend  and  a  companion  of  the 
first  expedition  to  Mt.  McKinley.  He  selected  for  me 
suitable  things.  Hastily  I  fell  into  one  of  these,  and 
mechanically  put  on  clean  linen — or  rather,  the  clothing 
was  put  on  by  my  attendants. 

Now  I  was  carried  to  the  American  Legation, 
where  I  lunched  with  Minister  Egan,  and  I  might  have 
been  eating  sawdust  for  all  the  impression  food  made  on 
me.  For  an  hour,  I  have  been  told  since,  I  was  plied 
with  questions.  It  is  a  strange  phenomenon  how  our 
bodies  will  act  and  our  lips  frame  words  when  the  mind 
is  blank.  I  had  no  more  idea  of  my  answers  than  the 
man  in  the  moon. 

Upon  my  brain,  with  the  quick,  nervous  twitter  of 
moving-picture  impressions,  swam  continually  the 
scenes  through  which  I  moved.  I  have  a  recollection,  on 
my  return  to  the  hotel,  of  going  through  hundreds  of 


470  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

telegrams.  Just  as  a  man  looks  at  his  watch  and  puts 
it  in  his  pocket  without  noting  the  time,  so  I  read  these 
messages  of  congratulation.  Tremendous  offers  of 
money  from  publishers,  and  for  lecture  engagements, 
and  opportunities  by  which  I  might  become  a  music-hall 
attraction  excited  no  interest  one  way  or  another. 

My  desire  to  show  appreciation  of  the  hospitality 
of  the  Danes  by  returning  to  America  on  a  Danish 
steamer  prevented  my  even  considering  some  of  these 
offers.  If  I  had  planned  to  deceive  the  world  for  money, 
is  it  reasonable  to  believe  I  should  have  thrown  away 
huge  sums  for  this  simple  show  of  courtesy? 

Having  lunched  with  Minister  Egan,  I  spent  part 
of  the  afternoon  of  the  day  of  my  arrival  hastily  scan- 
ning a  voluminous  pile  of  correspondence.  Money  of- 
fers and  important  messages  were  necessarily  pushed 
aside.  I  had  been  honored  by  a  summons  to  the  royal 
presence,  and  shortly  before  five  o'clock  repaired  to  the 
royal  palace. 

I  still  retain  in  my  mental  retina  a  picture  of  the 
king.  It  is  a  gracious,  kindly  memory.  Surrounded  by 
the  queen  and  his  three  daughters,  Princesses  Ingeborg, 
Thyra,  and  Dagmar,  he  rose,  a  gray-haired,  fatherly  old 
man,  and  with  warmness  of  feeling  extended  his  hand. 
Out  of  that  human  sea  of  swirling  white  faces  and  star- 
ing eyes,  in  which  I  had  struggled  as  a  swimmer  for  life, 
I  remember  feeling  a  sense  of  security  and  rest.  We 
talked,  I  think,  of  general  topics. 

I  returned  to  the  hotel.  Into  my  brain  came  the 
words,  from  some  one,  that  the  newspaper  correspon- 
dents, representing  the  great  dailies  and  magazines  of 
the  world,  were  waiting  for  me.  Would  I  see  them?  I 


GREENLAND  TO  COPENHAGEN       471 

went  downstairs  and  for  an  hour  was  grilled  with  ques- 
tions. They  came  like  shots,  in  many  tongues,  and  only 
now  and  then  did  familiar  English  words  strike  me  and 
quiver  in  my  brain  cells. 

I  have  been  told  I  was  self-possessed  and  calm. 
Had  I  gone  through  30,000  square  miles  of  land?  Was 
I  competent  to  take  observations  ?  Could  I  sit  down  and 
invent  observations  ?  Had  I  been  fully  possessed,  I  sup- 
pose, these  sudden  doubts  expressed  would  have  caused 
some  wonderment;  doubtless  I  was  puzzled  below  the 
realm  of  consciousness,  where,  they  say,  the  secret  service 
of  the  mind  grasps  the  most  elusive  things.  I  have  since 
read  my  replies  and  marveled  at  the  lucidity  of  certain 
answers;  only  my  bewilderment,  unless  I  were  mis- 
quoted, can  explain  the  absurdity  of  others. 

My  impression  of  the  banquet  that  night  in  the  City 
Hall  is  very  vague.  I  talked  aimlessly.  There  were 
speeches,  toasts  were  drunk ;  I  replied.  The  North  Pole 
was,  I  suppose,  the  subject,  but  so  bewildered  was  I 
at  the  time,  that  nothing  was  further  from  my  mind  than 
the  North  Pole.  If  an  idea  came  now  and  then  it  was 
the  feeling  that  I  must  get  away  without  offending 
these  people.  I  felt  the  atmosphere  of  excitement  about 
me  for  days,  pressing  me,  crushing  me. 

My  time  was  occupied  with  consultations,  recep- 
tions, lunches,  and  dinners,  between  which  there  was  a 
feverish  effort  to  answer  increasingly  accumulating 
telegrams.  Mr.  E.  G.  Wyckoff,  an  old  friend,  now 
came  along  and  took  from  me  certain  business  cares. 
By  day  there  was  excitement ;  by  night  excitement ;  there 
was  excitement  in  my  dreams. .  I  slept  no  more  than 
five  hours  a  night — if  I  could  call  it  sleep. 


472  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

As  a  surcease  from  this  turmoil  came  the  evening 
at  King  Frederick's  summer  palace,  where  I  dined  with 
the  royal  family  and  many  notable  guests.  All  were  so 
kindly,  the  surroundings  were  so  unostentatious,  that 
for  a  short  while  my  confusion  passed. 

I  remember  being  cornered  near  a  piano  after  din- 
ner by  the  young  members  of  the  family  and  plied  with 
questions.  I  felt  for  once  absolutely  at  ease  and  told 
them  of  the  wild  animals  and  exciting  hunts  of  the  north. 
Otherwise  we  talked  of  commonplace  topics,  and  rarely 
was  the  North  Pole  mentioned. 

Until  after  midnight,  on  my  return  to  my  hotel,  I 
sat  up  with  the  late  Commander  Hovgaard  and  Pro- 
fessor Olafsen,  secretary  of  the  Geographical  Society. 
I  clearly  recall  an  afternoon  when  Professor  Torp,  rec- 
tor of  the  university,  and  Professor  Elis  Stromgren, 
informed  me  that  the  university  desired  to  honor  me 
with  a  decoration.  Professor  Stromgren  asked  me  about 
my  methods  of  observation  and  I  explained  them  freely. 
He  believed  my  claim.  The-  question  of  certain,  abso- 
lute and  detailed  proofs  never  occurred  to  me.  I  was 
sure  of  the  verity  of  my  claim.  I  knew  I  had  been  as 
accurate  in  my  scientific  work  as  anyone  could  be. 

My  first  public  account  of  my  exploit  was  delivered 
before  the  Geographical  Society  on  the  evening  of  Sep- 
tember 7,  and  in  the  presence  of  the  king  and  queen, 
Prince  and  Princess  George  of  Greece,  most  of  the 
members  of  the  royal  family,  and  the  most  prominent 
people  of  Copenhagen.  I  had  outlined  my  talk  and 
written  parts  of  it.  With  the  exception  of  these,  which 
I  read,  I  spoke  extempore.  Because  of  the  probability 
of  the  audience  not  understanding  English,  I  confined 


GREENLAND  TO  COPENHAGEN       473 

myself  to  £  brief  narrative.     The  audience  listened 
quietly  and  their  credence  seemed  but  the  undemonstra- 

Vtive  acceptance  of  an  every-day  fact. 
Not  knowing  that  a  medal  was  to  be  presented  to 
me  at  that  time,  I  descended  from  the  platform  on  con- 
cluding my  speech.  I  met  the  crown  prince,  who  was 
ascending,  and  who  spoke  to  me.  I  did  not  understand 
him  and  proceeded  to  the  floor  before  the  stage.  Em- 
barrassed by  my  misunderstanding,  he  unfolded  his 
papers  and  began  a  presentation  speech.  Confused,  I 
remained  standing  below.  Whether  I  ascended  the 
stage  and  made  a  reply  or  received  the  medal  from  the 
floor,  I  do  not  now  remember. 

During  the  several  days  that  followed  I  spent  most 
of  my  time  answering  correspondence  and  attending  to 
local  obligations.  An  entire  day  was  spent  autograph- 
ing photographs  for  members  of  the  royal  family.  After 
much  hard  work  I  got  things  in  such  shape  that  I  saw 
my  way  clear  to  go  to  Brussels,  return  to  Copenhagen, 
and  make  an  early  start  for  home. 

I  had  delivered  my  talk  before  the  Geographical 
Society.  The  reporters  had  seen  me,  and  assailed  me 
with  questions,  and  had  packed  their  suit  cases.  Tired 
to  death  and  exhausted  with  want  of  sleep,  I  viewed 
the  prospect  of  a  departure  with  relief.  Because  of  my 
condition  I  refused  an  invitation  to  attend  a  banquet 
which  the  newspaper  Politiken  gave  to  the  foreign  cor- 
respondents at  the  Tivoli  restaurant. 

They  insisted  that  I  come,  if  only  for  five  minutes, 
and  promised  that  there  would  be  no  attempt  at  inter- 
viewing. I  went  and  listened  wearily  to  the  speeches, 
made  in  different  languages,  and  felt  no  stir  at  the  ap- 


474  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

plause.  While  the  representative  of  the  Matin  was 
speaking  in  French,  some  one  tiptoed  up  to  me  and 
placed  a  cablegram  under  my  plate.  From  all  sides  at- 
tendants appeared  with  cables  which  were  quietly  placed 
under  the  plates  of  the  various  reporters.  The  Matin 
man  stopped;  we  looked  at  the  cables.  A  deadly  lull 
fell  in  the  room.  You  could  have  heard  a  pin  drop.  It 
was  Peary's  first  message — "Stars  and  Stripes  nailed 
to  the  Pole!" 

My  first  feeling,  as  I  read  it,  was  of  spontaneous  be- 
lief. Well,  I  thought,  he  got  there!  On  my  right  and 
left  men  were  arguing  about  it.  It  was  declared  a  hoax. 
I  recognized  the  characteristic  phrasing  as  Peary's.  I 
knew  that  the  operators  along  the  Labrador  coast  knew 
Peary  and  that  it  would  be  almost  impossible  to  perpe- 
trate a  joke.  I  told  this  to  the  dinner  party.  The 
speeches  continued.  No  reference  was  made  to  the  mes- 
sage, but  the  air  seemed  charged  with  electricity. 

My  feeling  at  the  news,  as  I  analyze  it,  was  not  of 
envy  or  chagrin.  I  thought  of  Peary's  hard,  long  years 
of  effort,  and  I  was  glad;  I  felt  no  rivalry  about  the 
Pole;  I  did  feel,  aside  from  the  futility  of  reaching  the 
Pole  itself,  that  Peary's  trip  possibly  might  be  of  great 
scientific  value;  that  he  had  probably  discovered  new 
lands  and  mapped  new  seas  of  ice.  "There  is  glory 
enough  for  all,"  I  told  the  reporters. 

At  the  hotel  a  pile  of  telegrams  six  inches  high, 
from  various  papers,  awaited  me.  I  picked  eight  repre- 
sentative papers  and  made  some  diplomatic  reply, 
expressing  what  I  felt.  That  Peary  would  contest  my 
claim  never  entered  my  head.  It  did  seem,  and  still 
seems,  in  itself  too  inconsequential  a  thing  to  make  such 


GREENLAND  TO  COPENHAGEN       475 

a  fuss  about.  This  may  be  hard  to  believe  to  those  who 
have  magnified  the  heroism  of  such  an  achievement,  a 
thing  I  never  did  feel  and  could  not  feel. 

While  sitting  at  the  farewell  dinner  of  the  Geo- 
graphical Society  the  following  day,  Mr.  Peary's  sec- 
ond message,  saying  that  my  Eskimos  declared  I  had 
not  gone  far  out  of  sight  of  land,  came  to  me.  Those 
about  received  it  with  indignation.  Many  advised  me 
to  reply  in  biting  terms.  This  I  did  not  do ;  did  not  feel 
like  doing. 

Peary's  messages  caused  me  to  make  a  change  in 
my  plans.  Previously  I  had  accepted  an  invitation  to 
go  to  Brussels,  but  now,  as  I  was  being  attacked,  I 
determined  to  return  home  immediately  and  face  the 
charges  in  person.  I  took  passage  on  the  steamship 
Oscar  II,  sailing  direct  from  Copenhagen  to  New  York. 


COPENHAGEN  TO  THE  UNITED  STATES 

ACROSS  THE  ATLANTIC RECEPTION   IN    NEW   YORK BE- 
WILDERING   CYCLONE    OF   EVENTS INSIDE    NEWS   OF 

THE  PEARY  ATTACK HOW  THE  WEB  OF  SHAME  WAS 

WOVEN 

XXXII 

PEARY'S  UNDERHAND  WORK  AT  LABRADOR 

It  seemed  that,  coming  from  the  companionless 
solitude  of  the  North,  destiny  in  the  shape  of  crowds 
was  determined  to  pursue  me.  I  expected  to  transfer 
from  the  Melchior  to  the  Oscar  II  at  Christiansaand, 
Norway,  quietly  and  make  my  way  home  in  peace.  At 
Christiansaand  the  noise  began.  On  a  smaller  scale 
was  repeated  the  previous  ovation  of  Copenhagen. 

On  board  the  Oscar  II I  really  got  more  sleep  than 
I  had  for  months  previous  or  months  afterwards.  After 
several  days  of  seasickness  I  experienced  the  joys  of 
comparative  rest  and  slept  like  a  child.  My  brain  still 
seemed  numbed.  There  were  on  the  boat  no  curiosity- 
seekers;  no  crowds  stifled  me  nor  did  applause  thunder 
in  my  ears. 

Every  few  minutes,  before  we  got  out  of  touch  with 
the  wireless,  there  were  messages;  communications 
from  friends,  from  newspapers  and  magazines;  repeti- 


COPENHAGEN  TO  UNITED  STATES  477 

tions  of  the  early  charges  made  against  me;  questions 
concerning  Peary's  messages  and  my  attitude  toward 
him.  When  the  boat  approached  Newfoundland  the 
wireless  again  became  disturbing.  Then  came  the  "gold 
brick"  cable. 

At  this  time,  every  vestige  of  pleasure  in  the 
thought  of  the  thing  I  had  accomplished  left  me.  Since 
then,  and  to  this  day,  I  almost  view  all  my  efforts 
with  regret.  I  doubt  if  any  man  ever  lived  in  the 
belief  of  an  accomplishment  and  got  so  little  pleasure, 
and  so  much  bitterness,  from  it.  That  my  Eskimos  had 
told  Mr.  Peary  they  had  been  but  two  days  out  of  sight 
of  land  seemed  probable;  it  was  a  belief  I  had  always 
encouraged.  That  Mr.  Peary  should  persistently 
attack  me  did  arouse  a  feeling  of  chagrin  and  injury. 

I  spent  most  of  my  time  alone  in  my  cabin  or  stroll- 
ing on  the  deck.  The  people  aboard  considered  Peary's 
messages  amusing.  I  talked  little;  I  tried  to  analyze  the 
situation  in  my  mind,  but  wearily  I  gave  it  up ;  mentally 
I  was  still  dazed. 

During  the  trip  Director  Cold,  chief  of  the  Danish 
United  Steamship  Company,  helped  me  with  small  de- 
tails in  every  way;  Lonsdale,  my  secretary,  and  Mr. 
Cold's  secretary  were  busy  copying  my  notes  and  my 
narrative  story,  which  I  had  agreed  to  give  to  the  New 
York  Herald.  I  had  made  no  plans;  my  one  object 
was  to  see  my  family. 

As  we  approached  New  York  the  wireless  brought 
me  news  of  the  ovation  under  way.  This  amazed  and 
filled  me  with  dismay.  I  had  considered  the  exagger- 
ated reception  of  Copenhagen  a  manifestation  of  local 
excitement,  partly  due  to  the  interest  of  the  Danes  in 


478  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

the  North.  New  York,  I  concluded,  was  too  big,  too 
unemotional,  too  much  interested  in  bigger  matters  to 
bother  much  about  the  North  Pole.  This  I  told  Robert 
M.  Berry,  the  Berlin  representative  of  the  Associated 
Press,  who  accompanied  me  on  the  boat.  He  disagreed 
with  me. 

Having  burned  one  hundred  tons  of  coal  in  order 
to  make  time,  the  Oscar  II  arrived  along  American 
shores  a  day  before  that  arranged  for  my  reception.  So 
as  not  to  frustrate  any  plans,  we  lay  off  Shelter  Island 
until  the  next  day.  It  was  my  wish  to  send  a  message 
to  Mrs.  Cook  and  ask  her  to  come  out.  But  the  sea 
was  rough ;  and,  moreover,  she  was  not  well.  Now  tugs 
bearing  squads  of  reporters  began  to  arrive.  We  agreed 
to  let  no  one  aboard.  The  New  York  Journal,  with 
characteristic  enterprise,  had  brought  Anthony  Fiala 
on  its  tug  with  a  note  from  Mrs.  Cook.  So  an  exception 
had  to  be  made.  An  old  friend  and  a  letter  from  my 
wife  could  not  be  sent  away. 

That  night  I  slept  little.  Outside  I  heard  the  dull 
thud  of  the  sea.  Voices  exploded  from  megaphones 
every  few  minutes.  Mingled  emotions  filled  me.  The 
anticipation  of  meeting  wife  and  children  was  sweet; 
that  again,  after  an  absence  of  more  than  two  years,  I 
should  step  upon  the  shores  of  my  own  land  filled  me 
with  emotions  too  strong  for  words. 

The  next  morning  I  was  up  with  the  rising  of  the 
sun.  We  arrived  at  Quarantine  soon  after  seven. 
About  us  on  the  waves  danced  a  dozen  tugs  with  re- 
porters. In  the  distance  appeared  a  tug  toward  which 
I  strained  my  eyes,  for  I  was  told  it  bore  my  wife  and 
children.  With  a  feeling  of  delight,  which  only  long 


COPENHAGEN  TO  UNITED  STATES  479 

separation  can  give,  I  boarded  this,  and  in  a  moment 
they  were  in  my  arms.  I  was  conscious  of  confusion 
about  me;  of  whistling  and  shrieking;  uncanny  magni- 
fied voices  thundering  from  scores  of  megaphones;  of  a 
band  playing  an  American  air.  When  the  Grand  Re- 
public, thrilling  a  metallic  salute,  steamed  toward  us, 
and  the  cheers  of  hundreds  rent  the  air,  I  remembered 
asking  myself  what  it  could  be  all  about.  Why  all  this 
agitation? 

Again  the  contagion  of  excitement  bewildered  me; 
the  big  boat  drew  near  to  a  tug,  above  me  swirled  a  cloud 
of  hundreds  of  faces;  around  me  the  sunlit  sea,  with 
decorated  craft,  whirled  and  danced.  As  I  giddily 
ascended  the  gangplank  and  felt  a  wreath  of  roses  flung 
about  me  I  was  conscious  chiefly  of  an  unsuitable  lack 
of  appreciation.  I  spoke  briefly;  friends  and  relatives 
greeted  me;  the  shaking  of  thousands  of  hands  began; 
and  all  the  while  a  deep  hurt,  a  feeling  of  soreness, 
oppressed  me. 

From  that  day  on  until  after  I  left  New  York,  my 
life  was  a  kaleidoscopic  whirl  of  excitement,  for  which 
I  found  no  reason.  I  had  no  time  to  analyze  or  estimate 
public  enthusiasm  and  any  change  of  that  enthusiasm 
into  doubt.  I  had  no  sense  of  perspective;  involun- 
tarily I  was  swept  through  a  cyclone  of  events.  The 
bewilderment  which  came  upon  me  at  Copenhagen  re- 
turned, and  with  it  a  feeling  of  helplessness,  of  puzzle- 
ment ;  I  felt  much  as  a  child  might  when  taking  its  first 
ride  in  a  carousel.  Each  day  thereafter,  from  morning 
until  morning  there  was  a  continuous  rush  of  excite- 
ment; at  no  time,  until  I  fled  from  it,  did  I  get  more 
than  four  hours'  sleep  at  night — disturbed  sleep  at  that. 


480  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

I  had  not  a  moment  for  reflection,  and  even  now,  after 
recovering  from  the  lack  of  mental  perception  which 
inevitably  followed,  it  is  with  difficulty  that  I  recall  my 
impressions  at  the  time.  I  suppose  there  are  those  who 
think  that  I  was  having  a  good  time,  but  it  was  the 
hardest  time  of  my  life. 

I  remember  standing  in  the  pilot  house  of  the 
Grand  Republic,  my  little  ones  by  me,  and  watching 
thousands  of  men  along  the  wharves  of  the  East  River, 
going  mad.  The  world  seemed  engaged  in  some  fran- 
tic revel.  Factories  became  vocal  and  screamed  hide- 
ously; boats  became  hoarse  with  shrieking;  the  mega- 
phone cry  was  maddening.  Drawing  up  to  a  gayly 
decorated  pier,  a  thunder  of  voices  assailed  me.  I  felt 
crushed  by  the  unearthly  din. 

I  was  involuntarily  shoved  along,  and  found  myself 
in  an  automobile — one  of  many,  all  decorated  with  flags. 
Cameras  clicked  like  rapid-fire  guns.  A  band  played; 
roaring  voices  like  beating  sound  waves  rose  and  fell; 
faces  swam  before  me. 

Through  streets  jammed  with  people  we  moved 
along.  I  hardly  spoke  a  word  to  my  wife,  who  sat  near. 
Out  of  the  scene  of  tumult,  familiar  faces  peered  now 
and  again.  I  remember  being  touched  by  the  sight  of 
thousands  of  school  children,  assembled  outside  of  public 
schools  and  waving  American  flags. 

In  the  neighborhood  of  the  new  bridge,  under  the 
arch,  I  recall  seeing  the  eager  face  of  my  favorite  boy- 
hood school-teacher.  It  struck  me  at  the  time  that  she 
hardly  seemed  aged  a  day.  Something  swelled  up  within 
me,  and  I  was  conscious  of  a  desire  to  lean  out  through 
the  crowd  and  draw  her  into  the  machine.  Through  the 


COPENHAGEN  TO  UNITED  STATES  481 

thick  congestion  it  was  difficult  to  move;  even  the  police 
were  helpless.  Now  and  again  people  tried  to  climb 
into  the  machine  and  were  torn  away. 

At  the  Bushwick  Club  I  lunched  in  a  small  room 
with  friends,  and  a  feeling  of  pleasure  warmed  my  heart. 
During  the  reception  words  of  confidence  were  spoken 
and  somehow  filtered  into  my  mind.  I  shook  hands 
until  my  arms  were  sore,  bowed  my  head  until  my  neck 
ached.  I  was  forced  to  retire.  Later  there  was  dinner 
at  the  club,  after  which  I  received  seven  hundred  singers. 
By  this  time  I  felt  like  a  machine.  My  brain  was  blank. 
About  midnight,  utterly  exhausted,  I  arrived  at  the 
Waldorf-Astoria,  where  I  fought  through  a  crowd  in 
the  lobby.  I  think  I  sat  and  listened  to  Mrs.  Cook  tell- 
ing me  news  of  home  and  the  family  until  night  merged 
into  morning. 

Next  day  the  storm  through  which  I  was  being 
swept  began  again.  During  that  and  the  days  follow- 
ing I  made  many  mistakes,  did  and  said  unwise  things. 
I  want  to  show  you,  in  telling  of  these  events,  just  how 
helpless  I  was ;  what  a  victim  of  circumstance ;  how  un- 
fitted to  bear  the  physical  and  mental  demands  of  a 
ceaseless  procession  of  public  functions,  lectures,  din- 
ners, receptions,  days  and  nights  of  traveling,  and  how 
unable  to  cope  with  the  many  charges.  In  sixty  days 
there  were  not  less  than  two  hundred  lectures,  dinners, 
and  receptions,  not  to  mention  the  unremitting  train 
of  press  interviews.  With  no  club  of  friends  or  organi- 
zation of  any  kind  behind  me,  I  stood  the  strain  alone. 

I  was  ignorant  of  much  that  was  said  about  me. 
I  had  no  one  to  gauge  my  situation  at  any  time  and 
advise  me.  About  me  was  an  unbearable  pressure  from 


482  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

friends  and  foes;  I  stood  it  until  I  could  stand  it  no 
longer.  There  was  not  a  minute  of  relief,  not  a  minute 
to  think.  Coming  after  two  years  spent  in  the  Arctic, 
at  a  time  when  nature  was  paying  the  debt  of  long 
starvation  and  hardship,  the  stress  of  events  inevitably 
developed  a  mental  strain  bordering  on  madness. 
Where  could  I  go  to  get  rest  from  it  all?  This  was  my 
last  thought  at  night  and  my  first  thought  in  the 
morning. 

During  my  second  day  at  the  Waldorf  I  had  to  read 
proofs  of  the  narrative  to  be  printed  in  the  Herald,  go 
over  the  plans  of  my  book  with  the  New  York  publish- 
ing house  with  whom  I  had  signed  a  contract,  and  ex- 
amine hundreds  of  films  to  select  photographs.  There 
were  hundreds  of  letters  and  telegrams;  scores  of  re- 
porters demanding  interviews ;  hundreds  of  callers,  few 
of  whom  I  was  able  to  see.  An  army  of  publishers, 
lecture  managers,  and  even  vaudeville  managers  sent 
up  their  cards. 

The  chief  event  of  the  first  day  in  New  York  was 
the  inquisition  by  newspaper  reporters.  They  both 
interested  and  amused  me.  I  had  gone  through  the 
same  ordeal  in  Copenhagen,  and  I  knew  that  American 
interviewers  are  famed  for  their  wolfish  propensities. 

Before  I  saw  the  sensation-hungry  press  men,  I  got 
certain  news  that  shocked  my  sense  of  the  fairness  of  the 
American  .press.  Someone  interested  in  my  case  had 
sent  me  unsolicited  copies  of  all  telegrams,  cables  and 
wireless  messages  passing  between  New  York  and  the 
Peary  ship.  These  messages  now  continued  to  come 
daily,  and  thus  I  was  afforded  a  splendid  opportunity 
to  watch  an  underhand  game  of  deceit  wherein  Mr. 


COPENHAGEN  TO  UNITED  STATES  483 

Peary  was  shown  to  be  in  league  with  a  New  York 
paper  aiming  secretly  to  further  his  claims  and  to  cast 
doubt  upon  mine. 

Among  these  was  a  message  asking  a  certain  editor 
to  meet  Peary  at  Bangor,  Maine,  to  arrange  for  the  pro- 
Peary  campaign  of  bribery  and  conspiracy  which  fol- 
lowed. In  another,  and  the  most  remarkable  message, 
Mr.  Peary  first  showed  the  sneaking  methods  by  which 
the  whole  controversy  was  conducted.  A  long  list  of 
questions  had  been  prepared  by  Mr.  Peary  at  Battle 
Harbor,  covering,  as  rival  interests  dictated,  every 
phase  of  Polar  work.  These  questions  were  sent  to  the 
New  York  Times  with  instructions  to  compel  answers 
from  me  on  each  of  a  series  of  catch  phrases. 

When  the  Times  reporter  came  to  me  with  these,  I 
recognized  the  Peary  phraseology  at  once.  I  after- 
wards compared  the  copy  of  Peary's  telegram  with 
that  of  the  Times.,  and  found  in  it  nearly  every  question 
asked  by  the  reporters.  While  the  questions  were  being 
read  off,  it  required  a  good  deal  of  patience  to  conceal 
my  irritation,  as  I  knew  Mr.  Peary  was  talking  through 
the  smooth-faced,  smiling  press  cubs,  none  of  whom 
knew  that  he  was  Peary's  mouthpiece.  Every  one  of  the 
Peary  questions,  however,  was  amusing,  for  I  had  an- 
swered each  a  dozen  times  in  Europe.  But  if  Mr. 
Peary  must  question  me,  why  did  he  stoop  to  the  hypoc- 
risy of  doing  it  through  others?  The  other  reporters 
asked  many  questions,  the  reports  of  which  I  have  not 
seen  since.  But  the  duplicity  of  this  little  trick  left  a 
strong  impression  of  unfairness. 

At  about  this  time  I  began  to  examine  critically  the 
many  efforts  which  Mr.  Peary  had  begun  to  make  to 


484  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

discredit  my  achievement.  In  going  over  such  of  his 
reports  of  his  own  claims  as  had  gotten  to  me,  I  was  at 
once  struck  with  the  statements  parallel  to  mine  which 
he  had  sent  out,  and  since  these  so  thoroughly  proved  my 
case  I  felt  that  I  could  be  liberal  and  patient  with  Mr. 
Peary's  ill-temper. 

I  now  learned  that  after  Mr.  Peary  got  the  full 
reports  of  my  attainment  of  the  Pole  at  the  wireless 
station  at  Labrador,  he  withdrew  behind  the  rocks  to  a 
place  where  no  one  was  looking,  and  digested  that  re- 
port. His  own  report  came  after  the  digestion  of  mine. 
In  the  meantime,  his  delay  in  proceeding  to  Sydney, 
Nova  Scotia,  and  his  silence,  were  explained  by  the  offi- 
cial announcement  that  the  ship  was  being  washed  and 
cleaned.  This  was  manifestly  absurd.  No  seaman  re- 
turning from  a  voyage  of  a  year,  where  sailors  have  no 
occupation  whatever  except  such  work,  waits  until  he 
gets  to  port  before  cleaning  his  decks.  Furthermore, 
this  hiding  behind  the  rocks  of  Labrador  continued  for 
weeks.  What  was  the  mysterious  occupation  of  Mr. 
Peary?  The  Roosevelt,  as  described  by  visitors  when 
she  arrived  at  Sydney,  was  still  very  dirty.  When  Mr. 
Peary's  much-heralded  report  was  finally  printed,  every 
Arctic  explorer  at  once  said  the  astonishing  parallel 
statements  in  Mr.  Peary's  narrative  either  proved  my 
case  or  convicted  Mr.  Peary  of  plagiarism.  My  story, 
by  this  time,  had  got  well  along  in  the  New  York 
Herald.  To  help  Mr.  Peary  out  of  his  position, 
McMillan  later  rushed  to  the  press.  He  was  under 
contract  not  to  write  or  talk  to  the  press,  nor  to  lecture, 
write  magazine  articles  or  books,  as  were  all  of  Peary's 
men.  But  this  prohibition  was  waived  temporarily. 


COPENHAGEN  TO  UNITED  STATES  485 

Then  McMillan  made  the  statement  that  Dr.  Cook  must 
have  gotten  the  "parallel  data"  and  inside  information 
from  Mr.  Peary's  Eskimos.  Everyone  acquainted  with 
Greenland,  including  McMillan,  knows  that  such  inter- 
communication was  impossible.  I  had  left  for  Uper- 
navik  by  the  time  Peary  returned  to  Etah,  Therefore, 
McMillan  and  Peary  both  were  caught  in  a  deliberate 
lie,  as  were  also  Bartlett*  and  Borup  later.  These  were 
Mr.  Peary's  witnesses  in  the  broadside  of  charges  with 
which  I  was  to  be  annihilated. 

A  few  days  after  my  arrival  in  America  I  learned  for 
the  first  time  of  the  strange  death  of  Ross  Marvin. 
We  were  asked  by  Mr.  Peary  to  believe  that  this  young 
man  of  more  than  average  intelligence,  a  graduate  of 
Cornell  University  and  of  the  New  York  Nautical 
School,  a  man  of  experience  on  the  Polar  seas,  stepped 
over  young  ice  alone,  without  a  life-line,  and  sank 
through  a  film  of  ice  to  a  grave  in  the  Arctic  waters. 
An  idiot  might  do  that ;  but  Marvin,  unless  he  went 

*Captain  Robert  A.  Bartlett,  of  the  Peary  ship  Roosevelt,  has  fig- 
ured much  in  this  controversy.  Most  of  his  reported  statements,  I  am 
inclined  to  believe,  are  distorted.  But  he  has  allowed  the  words  attrib- 
uted to  him  to  stand;  therefore,  the  harm  done  is  just  as  great  as  if  the 
charges  were  true.  He  allowed  Henry  Rood,  in  The  Saturday  Evening 
Post,  to  say  that  my  expedition  was  possible  only  through  the  advice  of 
Bartlett.  Every  statement  which  Rood  made,  as  Bartlett  knows,  is  a  lie. 
He  has  allowed  this  to  stand,  and  he  thereby  stands  convicted  as  party  to 
a  faked  article  written  with  the  express  purpose  of  inflicting  an  injury. 

Bartlett  cross-questioned  my  Eskimos  about  instruments.  By  showing 
them  a  sextant  and  other  apparatus  he  learned  that  I  not  only  had  a  full 
set,  but  he  also  learned  how  I  used  them.  Peary,  although  having  Bart- 
ktt's  report  on  this,  insinuated  that  I  had  no  instruments,  and  that  I 
made  no  observations.  Bartlett  knew  this  to  be  a  lie,  but  he  remained 
silent.  He  is  therefore  a  party  to  a  Peary  lie. 

In  the  early  press  reports  Bartlett  is  credited  with  saying  that  "Cook 
had  no  instruments."  A  year  later,  after  Bartlett  returne'd  from  another 
trip  north,  faked  pictures  and  faked  news  items  were  printed  with  the 
Bartlett  interviews  and  reports.  There  was  no  protest,  and  at  the  same 
time  Bartlett  said  that  books,  instruments,  and  things  belonging  to  me 
had  been  destroyed.  In  the  following  year  Bartlett  announced  that  he  was 


486  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

suddenly  mad,  would  not  do  it.  To  cross  the  young  ice 
of  open  leads,  like  that  in  which  Marvin  is  said  to  have 
perished,  is  a  daily,  almost  hourly,  experience  in  Arctic 
travel.  To  safeguard  each  other's  lives,  and  to  save 
sledges  and  dog  teams,  life-lines  are  carried  in  coils  on 
the  upstanders  of  the  sled.  When  about  to  risk  a  cross- 
ing, a  line  is  always  fixed  from  one  to  the  other  and  from 
sled  to  sled.  When  this  is  done,  and  an  accident  hap- 
pens such  as  that  which  is  alleged  to  have  befallen 
Marvin,  the  victim  is  saved  by  the  pull  of  his  companions 
on  the  line.  This  is  done  as  unfailingly  as  one  eats 
meals.  Would  a  man  of  Marvin's  experience  and  in- 
telligence neglect  such  a  precaution?  I  knew  such  an 
accident  might  have  happened  to  the  inexperienced  ex- 
plorers of  the  days  of  Franklin,  but  to-day  it  seemed 
incredible.  Furthermore,  Peary  was  boasting  of  what 
he  styled  the  "Peary  system,"  for  which  is  claimed  such 
thoroughness  that  without  it  no  other  explorer  could 
reach  the  Pole.  If  Marvin's  death  was  natural,  then  he 
is  a  victim  of  this  system. 

"going  after  Cook's  instruments."  Has  the  press  lied,  or  has  Bartlett 
lied?  Next  to  Henson,  Mr.  Peary's  colored  servant,  Captain  Bartlett  is 
Peary's  star  witness. 

George  Borup,  in  "A  Tenderfoot  With  Peary,"  after  repeating  in  his 
book  many  pro-Peary  lies,  tried  to  prove  his  assertion  by  an  alleged  study 
of  my  sledge  (P.  300):  "Except  for  its  being  shortened,  the  sledge  was 
the  same  as  when  it  had  left  Annoatok.  It  weighed  perhaps  thirty  pounds, 
and  was  very  flimsy." 

This  is  a  deliberate  lie,  for  it  was  only  a  half-sled,  reassembled  and 
repaired  by  old  bits  of  driftwood.  After  this  first  lie  he  says,  in  the 
same  paragraph:  "Yet  it  had  only  two  cracks  in  it."  The  upstanders  had 
been  cracked  in  a  dozen  places,  the  runners  were  broken,  and  every  part 
was  cracked. 

Borup  shows  by  his  orthography  of  Eskimo  words  that  he  knows  almost 
nothing  of  the  Eskimo  language.  Therefore  he  may  be  dismissed  as  incom- 
petent where  Eskimo  reports  are  to  be  interpreted.  He  is  committed  to 
the  Peary  interests,  which  also  eliminates  him.  from  the  jury.  But  in  his 
report  of  my  sled  he  has  stooped  to  lies  which  forever  deprive  him  of 
being  credited  with  any  honest  opinion  on  the  Polar  controversy. 


COPENHAGEN  TO  UNITED  STATES  487 

But  let  us  read  between  the  lines  of  this  harrowing 
tragedy.  After  learning  of  my  attainment  of  the  Pole, 
Peary  rushed  to  the  wireless.  With  a  letter  in  his 
pocket  from  Captain  Adams  which  gave  the  news  that 
started  the  ire  of  envy,  and  which  also  gave  the  news 
that  convicted  Peary  of  a  lie,  he  thereafter  for  a  week 
or  more  kept  the  wires  busy  with  the  famous  "gold 
brick"  messages. 

Marvin's  death,  and  the  duty  to  a  bereaved  family, 
which  ordinary  humanity  would  have  dictated,  were  of 
no  consequence  to  one  making  envious,  vicious  attacks. 
For  a  week  all  the  world  blushed  with  shame  because  of 
the  dishonor  thus  brought  upon  our  country  and  our 
flag.  In  New  York  there  was  a  happy  home,  a  loving- 
mother,  a  fond  sister;  anxious  friends  were  all  busy  in 
preparing  surprises  for  the  happy  homecoming  of  the 
one  beloved  by  all.  It  was  a  busy  week,  with  joyous, 
heart-stirring  anticipation.  There  was  no  news  from 
the  Peary  ship.  Not  a  word  came  to  indicate  that  their 
expected  returning  hero  had  been  lost  in  the  icy  seas. 
To  that  mother's  yearning  heart  her  boy  was  nearing 
home — but  alas!  no  news  came!  A  week  passed,  and 
still  no  news ! 

At  last,  after  Peary  had  digested  my  narrative, 
the  carefully  prepared  press  re.port  was  put  on  the 
wires.  Ross  Marvin's  family,  engrossed  in  prepara- 
tions for  a  reception  with  flowers  and  flags,  was  about 
to  see,  in  cold,  black  print,  that  he  for  whom  their  hearts 
beat  expectantly  was  no  more.  At  the  last  moment, 
Peary's  conscience  seemingly  troubled  him.  A  long 
message  was  sent  to  a  friend  to  break  the  news  and  to 
soften  the  effects  of  the  press  reports  on  that  poor 


488  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

mother  and  sister.  That  message  was  sent  "Collect." 
A  man  who  had  given  years  of  his  time  and  his  life  to 
glorify  Peary  was  not  worthy  of  a  prepaid  telegram! 
Later,  an  important  letter  from  Marvin  reached  his 
own  home.  In  it  the  stealing  of  my  supplies  is  referred 
to  in  a  way  to  show  that  Marvin  condemned  Peary. 
The  public  ought  to  know  the  wording  of  this  part  of  the 
letter.  Why  has  it  been  suppressed?  Marvin's  death, 
to  my  understanding,  does  not  seem  natural.  With  a 
good  deal  of  empty  verbiage  the  sacrifice  of  this  un- 
fortunate young  man  is  explained;  but  two  questions 
are  forced  at  once:  Why  was  Marvin  without  a  life- 
line? Why  were  conveniently  lost  with  him  certain 
data  that  might  disprove  Peary's  case? 

If  Marvin  sank  into  the  ice,  as  Peary  said  he  did, 
then  Peary  is  responsible  for  the  loss  of  that  life,  for  he 
did  not  surround  him  with  proper  safeguards.  The 
death  of  this  man  points  to  something  more  than 
tragedy.  Since  Marvin's  soundings  were  made  under 
the  authority  of  the  Coast  and  Geodetic  Survey,  the 
American  Government  is,  therefore,  answerable  for  this 
death. 

Mr.  Peary's  treatment  of  Marvin  wearied  me  of 
all  the  Peary  talk  at  the  time;  and,  furthermore,  all  of 
Mr.  Peary's  charges,  of  which  so  much  fuss  was  made, 
carried  the  self-evident  origin  of  cruel  envy  and  selfish- 
ness. First,  the  Eskimos,  put  through  a  third  degree 
behind  closed  doors,  were  reported  to  have  said  that  I 
had  not  been  more  than  two  sleeps  out  of  sight  of  land. 
This  was  easily  explained.  They  had  been  instructed 
not  t©  tell  Mr.  Peary  of  my  affairs,  and  they  had  been 
encouraged  to  believe  themselves  always  near  land. 


COPENHAGEN  TO  UNITED  STATES  489 

Then  this  charge  was  dropped,  and  the  next  was  made, 
the  one  about  my  not  reporting  the  alleged  cache  at 
"Cape  Thomas  Hubbard."  That  assertion,  instead  of 
injuring  me,  convicted  Peary  of  trying  to  steal  from 
Captain  Sverdrup  the  honor  of  discovering  and  naming 
Svartevoeg.  For  it  was  shown  that  by  deception  "Cape 
Thomas  Hubbard"  had  been  written  over  a  point  dis- 
covered years  earlier  by  another  explorer.  For  this 
kind  of  honor  Hubbard  had  contributed  to  Peary's 
expeditions.  But  is  not  the  obliteration  of  a  geo- 
graphic name  for  money  a  kind  of  geographic  larceny? 

Then  was  forced  the  charge  that  I  had  told  no  one 
of  my  Polar  success  in  the  North,  and  therefore  the 
entire  report  was  an  afterthought.  Whitney  and  Prich- 
ard  later  cleared  this  up,  but  at  the  very  time  when 
Peary  made  this  charge  he  had  in  his  possession  a  letter 
from  Captain  Adams,  of  the  whaler  Morning,  which  he 
had  received  in  the  North,  wherein  my  attainment  of  the 
Pole  was  stated.  When  Peary  got  the  Adams  letter  he 
put  on  full  steam,  abandoned  his  plan  to  visit  other 
Greenland  ports,  and  came  direct  to  Labrador,  to  the 
wireless.  Why  was  the  Adams  letter  suppressed,  when 
it  was  charged  that  I  had  told  no  one?  And,  further- 
more, why  had  Mr.  Peary  told  no  one  on  his  ship  of  his 
own  success  until  he  neared  Battle  Harbor? 

All  of  these  charges  betrayed  untruthful  methods 
on  the  part  of  Mr.  Peary  in  his  own  method  of  presen- 
tation. Automatically,  without  a  word  of  defence  on 
my  part,  each  charge  rebounded  on  the  charger. 

Then  there  came  the  page  broadside  of  rearranged 
charges  printed  by  every  American  paper.  It  con- 
tained nothing  new  in  the  text,  but  with  it  there  was  a 


490  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

faked  map,  copied  from  Sverdrup,  which  was  made  to 
appear  as  though  drawn  by  Eskimos.  The  best  answer 
to  this  whole  problem  is  that  from  the  same  tongues 
with  which  Mr.  Peary  tried  to  discredit  me  has  come 
a  much  more  formidable  charge  against  Mr.  Peary. 
For  these  same  Eskimos  have  since  said,  without 
quizzing  from  me,  that  Mr.  Peary  never  got  to  the  Pole 
and  that  he  never  saw  Crocker  Land. 

This  part  of  the  controversy  was  thoroughly  ana- 
lyzed by  Professor  W.  F.  Armbruster  and  Dr.  Henry 
Schwartz  in  the  St.  Louis  Mirror*. 

While  this  controversy  early  began  to  rage,  the 
tremendous  offers  of  money  which  came  in  every  hour 
contributed  to  my  bewilderment.  They  seemed  fabu- 

*Professor  Armbruster  and  Dr.  Schwartz,  of  St.  Louis,  at  a  time 
when  few  papers  had  the  courage  to  print  articles  in  my  defence,  appealed 
to  W.  R.  Reedy,  of  the  Mirror,  for  space  to  uncover  the  unfair  methods  of 
the  Pro-Peary  conspiracy.  This  space  was  liberally  granted,  and  the 
whole  controversy  was  scientifically  analyzed  by  the  Mirror  in  an  un- 
biased manner.  Here  is  shown  an  important  phase  of  the  Peary  charges, 
from  the  Mirror,  April  21,  1910.  As  it  clearly  reveals  the  facts,  I  present 
part  of  it  as  follows: 

The  point  made  by  Dr.  Schwartz,  that  there  is  a  contradiction  between 
Peary's  statements  of  September  28  and  October  13,  is  well  taken.  The 
statement  of  October  13  is  a  point-blank  contradiction  of  the  previous  one. 
Dr.  Schwartz  notes  that  when  Peary  made,  on  September  28,  what  Peary 
called  his  strongest  indictment  of  Dr.  Cook,  Peary  must  have  had  with 
him  at  Bar  Harbor  the  chart  with  the  trail  of  Cook's  route,  and  infers 
that,  as  the  later  charge  was  by  far  the  stronger  indictment  of  the  two, 
there  must  be  some  other  explanation  of  the  contradiction. 

Analysis  of  this  contradiction  develops  one  of  the  most  serious  proposi- 
tions of  the  whole  Polar  controversy.  Mr.  Peary  might  now  say  that  he 
was  holding  his  strongest  point  in  reserve,  but  such  explanation  would 
not  be  sufficient,  for  he  stated  that  the  indictment  of  September  28  is  "the 
strongest  that  has  been  advanced  in  Arctic  exploration  ever  since  the 
great  expedition  was  sent  there,"  and  no  child  is  so  simple  as  to  believe  that 
the  indictment  of  September  28  is  at  all  comparable  in  magnitude  to  the 
one  of  October  13.  Upon  analysis,  we  find  that  there  is  indeed  another 
explanation,  and  only  one,  and  that  is,  that  when  the  indictment  of  Septem- 
ber 28  was  made,  the  one  of  October  13  had  not  been  conceived  or  con- 
cocted, and  it  will  show  that  Peary,  Bartlett,  McMillan,  Borup  and  Henson, 
all  who  signed  the  statement  of  October  13,  perpetrated  a  gross  false- 
hood and  imposition  upon  the  public.  All  are  caught  in  the  one  net. 

If  this  coterie  had  received  from  the  Eskimos  such  information  as  is 


COPENHAGEN  TO  UNITED  STATES  491 

lous;  the  purport  was  beyond  me.  I  imagined  this  as 
part  of  a  dream  from  which  I  should  awake.  Were  I 
the  calculating  monster  of  cupidity  which  some  believe 
me,  I  suppose  I  should  have  been  more  circumspect  in 
making  my  financial  arrangements. 

I  should  hardly,  for  instance,  have  sold  my  narra- 
tive story  to  Mr.  James  Gordon  Bennett  for  $25,000 
when  there  were  single  offers  of  $50,000,  $75,000, 
$100,000,  and  more,  for  it.  While  I  was  in  Copen- 
hagen, and  before  the  Herald  offer  was  accepted,  Mr. 
W.  T.  Stead  had  come  with  a  message  from  W.  R. 
Hearst  with  instructions  to  double  any  other  offer  pre- 
sented for  my  narrative.  Had  I  accepted  Mr.  Hearst's 

claimed  by  them  in  their  statement  of  October  13,  then  they  must  have 
received  it  from  the  Eskimos  before  Peary  and  his  party  left  Etah  on  their 
return  to  America.  If  they  had  the  information  when  they  left  the 
Eskimos  at  Etah,  on  their  return  to  America,  then  they  had  it  when 
they  arrived  at  Indian  Harbor,  and  before  their  statement  of  September 
28  was  made. 

In  their  statement  of  October  13,  1909,  Peary,  Bartlett,  McMillan, 
Borup  and  Henson  state,  and  sign  their  names  to  the  statement  made  to 
the  world  and  copyrighted,  that  they  had  a  map  on  which  E-tuk-i-shook 
and  Ah-we-lah,  Dr.  Cook's  two  Eskimos,  had  traced  for  them  the  route 
taken  by  Dr.  Cook,  and  that  this  was  also  supported  by  the  verbal  state- 
ments of  the  two  Eskimos,  that  Dr.  Cook  had  reached  the  northern  point 
of  Heiberg  Land,  or  Cape  Thomas  Hubbard;  that  he  had  gone  two  sleeps 
north  of  it,  had  then  turned  to  the  west  or  southwest,  and  returned  to  the 
northern  headland  of  Heiberg  Land,  but  on  the  west  or  northwest  side, 
and  had  sent  back  one  of  the  Eskimos  to  the  cache  left  on  the  headland, 
but  on  the  east  side  of  the  point,  and  remained  at  this  new  place  on  the 
west  side  of  the  point  for  four  or  five  sleeps.  Then,  all  the  time  that 
Peary  was  challenging  and  impugning  that  Dr.  Cook  had  reached  even  the 
northern  point  of  Heiberg  Land,  according  to  their  own  statement  of 
October  13,  they  had  in  their  pockets  the  map  and  information  from  the 
Eskimos  that  Dr.  Cook  had  not  only  reached  the  northern  point  of  Heiberg 
Land,  but  traveled  above  it  and  turned  around  the  point.  In  so  challenging 
that  Dr.  Cook  had  reached  even  the  northern  point  of  said  land,  and 
thereby  discrediting  Dr.  Cook  with  all  the  force  and  influence  at  their 
command,  when,  according  to  their  own  later  statement,  they  had  then  and 
at  that  time,  and  before  such  time  (since  they  left  Etah  on  their  return 
to  America),  the  statements,  trail  of  route  and  testimony  of  the  Eskimos 
entirely  to  the  contrary,  Peary  and  his  coterie  deliberately  and  knowingly 
prepetrated  on  the  public  the  grossest  of  falsehoods  and  impositions. 

There  are  several  other  contradictions  in  the  statement  of  October  13. 


492  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

bid  he  would  have  paid  $400,000  for  what  I  sold  for 
$25,000.  Here  is  a  sacrifice  of  $375,000.  Does  that 
look  as  if  I  tried  to  hoax  the  world  for  sordid  gain,  as 
my  enemies  would  like  the  public  to  believe?  What 
Mr.  Bennett  asked  and  offered  $25,000  for  was  a  series 
of  four  articles  on  adventures  in  the  North,  for  use  in 
the  Sunday  supplement  of  the  Herald.  I  had  no  such 
articles  prepared  at  the  time,  nor,  as  I  knew,  should  I 
have  time  to  write  these.  I  did  have  the  narrative  story 
of  my  trip,  which -consisted  of  twenty-five  thousand  to 
thirty  thousand  words,  complete.  I  decided,  when  I 
heard  the  first  reports  of  doubt  cast  on  my  claim,  to 
publish  my  narrative  story  as  an  honest  and  sincere 
proof  of  my  claim  as  soon  as  possible.  So  I  gave  this 
to  Mr.  Bennett  for  the  sum  offered  purely  for  Sunday 
articles. 


One  is  the  statement  that  Pan-ic-pa  (the  father  of  E-tuk-i-shook),  was 
familiar  with  the  first  third  and  last  third  of  the  journey  of  Dr.  Cook 
and  his  two  Eskimos.  Pan-ic-pa  may  be  familiar  with  the  territory  of  the 
last  third  of  the  route,  but  not  with  the  journey  made  by  Dr.  Cook  and 
E-tuk-i-shook  and  Ah-we-lah  over  this  part  of  the  route,  for  these  three 
alone  made  the  journey  from  Cape  Sparbo  to  Annoatok.  Pan-ic-pa  went 
only  as  far  as  the  northern  point  of  Heiberg  Land,  and  returned  from  there 
nearly  a  year  before  Dr.  Cook  and  his  two  Eskimos  arrived  from  Cape 
Sparbo.  This  is  shown  by  Peary  and  his  party  themselves  in  their  state- 
ment that  Pan-ic-pa,  the  father  of  E-tuk-i-shook,  a  very  intelligent  man, 
who  was  in  the  party  of  Eskimos  that  came  back  from  Dr.  Cook  from 
the  northern  end  of  Nansen's  Strait  (Sound),  came  in  and  indicated  the 
same  localities  and  details  as  the  two  boys.  Of  course  Pan-ic-pa  could 
only  indicate  the  localities  that  he  had  himself  journeyed  to  with  Dr.  Cook, 
and  not  any  after  he  had  left  Dr.  Cook  and  the  two  Eskimos  at  the 
norther  point  of  Heiberg  Land,  or  the  northern  end  of  Nansen's  Sound, 
which  is  the  same  thing. 

Another  contradiction,  a  very  serious  one  indeed,  as  important  as  the 
first  of  the  foregoing  contradictions  is,  that  if  Peary  and  his  party  had 
such  information  from  the  Eskimos  as  they  claimed  in  their  statement  of 
October  13,  then  they  knew  that  the  little  sledge  of  Dr.  Cook  which 
they  saw  at  Etah  was  not  the  sledge  that  made  the  trip  to  the  Pole. 
The  printed  reports  show  that  long  before  October  13  Peary  and  all  his 
henchmen  were  challenging  and  charging  to  the  public  that  the  little  sled 
in  question  left  with  Whitney,  could  not  possibly  have  made  the  trip  to  the 
Pole.  In  the  statement  of  October  13,  Peary  and  his  party  state  that, 


GOVERNOR    KUAUL    IX    HIS    STUDY 
ARRIVAL   AT   TJPEHNAVIK 


POLAR   TRAGEDY— A   DESERTED    CHILD    OF   THE    SULTAN   OF   THE 
NORTH   AND    ITS   MOTHER 


COPENHAGEN  TO  UNITED  STATES  493 

Mr.  Bennett  offered  me  $5,000  additional  for  the 
European  rights  of  this  story.  To  this  offer  I  made 
no  reply,  giving  Mr.  Bennett  the  sole  news  rights  of  the 
story  for  the  entire  world. 

When  I  reached  New  York,  needing  ready  money, 
I  wired  Mr.  Bennett  for  an  advance  on  my  story.  He 
cabled  back  an  immediate  order  for  the  entire  sum  of 
$25,000.  This  gave  me  a  sudden  glow,  a  feeling  of 
pleasure  at  what  I  regarded  as  a  display  of  confidence. 

With  my  lecture  work  and  traveling  I  was  kept  so 
busy  that  I  did  not  have  time  to  go  over  the  story,  type- 
written from  my  almost  illegible  notes,  which  was  sent 
to  the  New  York  Herald.  When  I  did  go  over  the 
proofs  and  found  many  grievous  errors,  the  Herald  had 


according  to  the  Eskimos,  Dr.  Cook  and  his  two  Eskimos  started  from  the 
northern  point  of  Heiberg  Land  with  only  two  sledges.  Further  on  in  the 
statement,  that  the  dogs  and  one  sledge  were  abandoned  in  Jones  Sound, 
and  that  at  Cape  Vera — western  end  of  Jones  Sound — Peary  and  his  party 
say  that  E-tuk-i-shook  and  Ah-we-lah,  Dr.  Cook's  two  Eskimos,  informed 
them  that  (quoting  Peary  and  his  party's  statement  verbatim),  "here  they 
cut  tho  remaining  sledge  oif — that  is,  shortened  it,  as  it  was  awkward  to 
transport  with  the  boat,  and  near  here  they  killed  a  walrus." 

During  all  the  time  then,  before  October  13,  that  Peary  and  his  party 
were  belittling  this  sled,  and  referring  to  its  character  as  a  positive  proof 
that  Dr.  Cook  could  not  have  reached  the  Pole,  and  stating  that  it  would 
have  been  knocked  to  pieces  in  a  few  days,  they,  according  to  their  own 
statement  of  October  13,  knew,  even  while  using  such  argument  against 
Dr.  Cook,  that  the  little  sled  was  not  the  original  sled,  but  only  a  part 
of  one  which  the  desperate  and  fearfully  hard-pressed  wanderers  had  them- 
selves— having  no  dogs — dragged  their  food  for  three  hundred  miles  over 
one  of  the  roughest  and  most  terrible  strectches  of  the  frozen  zone,  never 
before  traveled  by  man.  According  to  their  own  statement  of  October  13, 
Peary  and  his  clique  convict  themselves  of  boldly  and  deliberately  perpe- 
trating gross  falsehoods  against  Dr.  Cook  and  upon  the  people.  Then  shall 
we  believe  anything  further  from  them? 

There  is  only  one  rational  view  to  take  of  their  statement  of  October 
13.  That,  knowing  their  first  charges  were  certain  to  fail,  the  statement 
of  October  13  was  concocted  for  their  own  base  purposes.  No  sane  person 
can  believe  that  if  they  had  had  such  exceedingly  damaging  information  as 
is  claimed  by  them  in  their  statement  of  October  13,  they  could  have  instead 
made  use  of  charges  far  less  damaging  and  known  to  them  to  be  false. 

W.  J.  ARMBRUSTER. 

ST.  Louis,  Mo.,  April  13,  1910. 


494  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

already  syndicated  the  story.  It  was  too  late  for  any 
corrections,  and  thus  many  errors  appeared. 

I  made  a  contract  with  a  New  York  publishing 
house,  while  in  Copenhagen,  with  the  idea  of  getting 
out  my  book  and  all  proofs  possible  as  soon  as  the 
presses  would  allow,  in  view  of  the  imminent  contro- 
versy. For  the  English  and  American  rights  to  my 
book  I  was  to  receive  $150,000  in  a  lump  sum  and  an 
additional  $150,000  in  royalties.  Although  papers 
were  signed  for  this,  later  on,  when  things  seemed  turn- 
ing against  me  and  I  saw  the  publishers  were  getting 
"cold  feet,"  I  voluntarily  freed  them  from  the  contract. 

By  the  time  I  left  Copenhagen,  as  I  figured  later, 
offers  for  book  and  magazine  material  and  lectures 
had  aggregated  just  one  and  one-half  million  dollars. 
A  prominent  New  York  manager  made  me  an  offer  of 
$250,000  for  a  series  of  lectures.  During  the  first  few 
days  I  had  absolutely  no  system  of  caring  for  this  corre- 
spondence, hundreds  of  important  cablegrams  remained 
unopened,  and  huge  offers  of  money  were  ignored.  It 
was  only  after  Minister  Egan  sent  Walter  Lonsdale,  in 
response  to  my  request  for  a  competent  secretary,  that 
some  intelligible  information  was  gleaned  from  the  mass 
of  correspondence.  Most  of  it,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  was 
read  only  when  we  were  on  the  Oscar  II,  bound  for 
home. 

After  making  my  arrangement  with  Mr.  Bennett, 
the  Matin  of  Paris  had  sent  me  an  offer  of  $50,000  for 
the  serial  rights  of  a  French  translation  of  the  story  to 
appear  in  the  Herald.  This  included  a  lecture  under 
the  auspices  of  the  paper  in  Paris.  My  anxiety  to  get 
home  prevented  a  consideration  of  this ;  and  it  was  only 


COPENHAGEN  TO  UNITED  STATES  495 

after  I  sailed  on  the  Oscar  II  that  I  realized  I  could  have 
gone  to  Paris,  delivered  the  lecture,  and  returned  to 
New  York  by  a  fast  boat. 

On  the  Oscar  II  a  wireless  had  reached  me  of  a 
large  offer  for  a  lecture  during  the  convention  in  St. 
Louis.  This  I  decided  to  accept,  the  simple  reason 
being  that  I  needed  money. 

Much  criticism  has  been  hurled  at  me  because  I 
started  on  a  lecture  campaign  when  I  should  have  pre- 
pared my  data  and  submitted  proof.  At  that  time  I 
was  in  no  position  to  anticipate  or  understand  this  criti- 
cism. Every  explorer  for  fifty  years  had  done  the  same 
thing,  all  had  delivered  lectures  and  written  articles 
about  their  work  after  a  first  preliminary  report.  Sup- 
plementary and  detailed  data  were  usually  given  long 
afterwards,  not  as  proof  but  as  a  part  of  the  plan  of 
recording  ultimate  results.  I  had  the  precedents  of 
Stanley,  Nordenskjold,  Nansen,  Peary,  and  others.. 

Had  I  anticipated  the  furore  that  was  being  raised 
about  proofs,  I  probably  should  have  taken  public 
opinion  into  my  consideration.  So  firm  was  my  own 
conviction  of  achievement  that  the  difficulty  of  supply- 
ing such  absolute  proof  as  the  unique  occasion  after- 
wards demanded  never  occurred  to  me.  My  feeling  at 
the  time  was  that  I  was  under  no  obligation  to  patrons, 
to  the  Government,  to  any  society,  or  anyone,  and  that  I 
had  a  right  to  deliver  lectures  at  a  time  when  public 
interest  was  keyed  up,  and  to  prepare  my  detailed  re- 
ports at  a  time  when  I  should  have  more  leisure. 

My  family  needed  money.  Huge  sums  were 
offered  me  hourly;  I  should  have  been  unwise  indeed 
had  I  not  accepted  some  of  the  offers.  I  am  advised 


496  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

that  stories  of  enormous  lecture  profits  have  been  told. 
I  am  informed  that  the  newspapers  said  I  was  to  receive 
$25,000  for  going  to  St.  Louis.  The  truth  is  that  I  got 
less  than  half  that,  though  I  believe  St.  Louis  probably 
spent  more  than  $25,000  in  preparing  for  my  appear- 
ance there.  All  told,  I  delivered  about  twenty  lectures 
in  various  large  cities,  receiving  from  $1,000  to  $10,000 
per  lecture.  My  expenses  were  heavy,  so  that  in  the 
end  I  netted  less  than  $25,000.  When  I  determined  to 
stop  the  lecture  work  and  prepare  my  data,  I  canceled 
$140,000  worth  of  lecture  engagements. 

Each  day  there  was  a  routine  of  lunches  with 
speeches,  dinners  with  speeches,  suppers  with  speeches. 
The  task  of  devising  speeches  was  ever  present ;  with  me 
it  did  not  come  easy.  But  speeches  must  be  made,  and 
I  felt  a  tense  strain,  as  if  something  were  drawing  my 
mentality  from  me. 

Everywhere  I  went  crowds  pressed  about  me.  I 
shook  hands  until  the  flesh  of  one  finger  was  actually 
worn  through  to  the  bone.  Hundreds  of  people  daily 
came  to  see  me. 

About  this  time,  too,  my  bewildered  brain  began  to 
realize  that  I  was  also  the  object  of  most  ferocious 
attacks  from  many  quarters.  I  had  no  time  to  read  the 
newspapers,  and  these  charges  and  suspicions  filtered  in 
to  me  through  reporters  and  friends.  Usually  they 
reached  me  in  an  exaggerated  or  a  distorted  form. 

There  began  at  this  time  the  publication  of  innu- 
merable fake  interviews  and  stories  misrepresenting 
me.*  One  interviewer  quoted  me  as  saying  that 

*One  of  the  meanest  and  pettiest  charges  concocted  for  Mr.  Peary  at  a 
time  when  personal  veracity  was  regarded  as  the  test  of  rival  claims  was 


COPENHAGEN  TO  UNITED  STATES  497 

Dagaard  Jensen  had  seen  my  records,  and  therefore 
confirmed  my  claim  to  the  people  in  Copenhagen; 
another  that  I  said  Governor  KrauJ  of  Greenland  had 
reported  talking  with  iny  Eskimos,  who  had  confirmed 
my  report.  Dagaard  Jensen  justly  denied  this  by 
cable,  as  I  had  made  no  such  statement.  That  about 
Governor  Kraul  was  absurd  on  the  face  of  it,  as  he  was 
a  thousand  miles  away  from  my  Eskimos.  I  have  no 
means  of  knowing  the  embarrassing  statements  attrib- 
uted to  me- — things  which  were  variously  denied,  and 
which  hurt  me.  There  was  not  time  for  me  to  consider 
or  answer  them. 

Then  came  the  blow  which  almost  stunned  me — the 
news  that  Harry  Whitney  had  not  been  allowed  by 
Peary  to  bring  my  instruments  and  notes  home  with 
him. 

During  the  long  night  at  Cape  Sparbo  I  had  care- 
fully figured  out  and  reduced  most  of  my  important 
observations.  The  old,  rubbed,  oily,  and  torn  field 

that  I  had  attempted  to  steal  the  scientific  work  of  a  missionary  while  I 
was  on  the  Belgica  Antarctic  Expedition.  Director  Townsend,  of  the 
New  York  Aquarium,  who,  like  Mr.  Peary,  was  drawing  a  salary  from 
the  taxpayers  while  his  energies  were  spent  in  another  mission,  declared 
I  had  taken  a  dictionary,  compiled  by  Thos.  Bridges,  of  Indian  words, 
and  had  put  it  forth  as  my  own  work.  Dalenbagh,  of  the  American 
Geographical  Society,  and  of  the  "Worm  Diggers'  Union,"  polly-like,  also 
repeated  this  charge.  "Of  the  other  charges  against  Dr.  Cook  we  are  at 
sea,"  he  said,  "but  here  is  something  that  we  know  about."  By  expending 
five  cents  in  stamps,  five  minutes  with  the  pen,  both  Townsend  and 
Dalenbaugh  might  have  learned  that  the  dishonor  which  they  were  trying  to 
attach  to  some  one  else  was  on  themselves. 

Under  big  headlines,  "Dr.  Cook  Steals  a  Missionary's  Work,"  the 
New  York  Times  and  other  pro-Peary  papers  printed  columns  of  absolute 
lies  in  what  purported  to  be  interviews  with  Townsend.  Dalenbaugh,  point- 
ing to  this  gleefully,  said  "Dr.  Cook  has  been  guilty  of  wrong-doing  for 
many  years." 

Now  what  were  the  facts?  Among  the  scientific  collections  of  the 
Belgian  Expedition,  was  a  series  of  notes,  embodying  a  Yahagan  Indian 
Dictionary,  made  by  the  missionary,  Thomas  Bridges.  Although  this  was 
of  little  use  to  anybody,  it  was  a  scientific  record  worthy  of  preservation. 


498  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

notes,  the  instrumental  corrections  and  the  direct  read- 
ings were  packed  with  the  instruments,  and  these  were 
mostly  left  with  Mr.  Whitney.  The  figures  were  im- 
portant for  future  recalculation,  but  otherwise  had  not 
seemed  materially  important  to  me,  for  they  had  served 
their  purpose.  I  had  with  me  all  the  important  data, 
such  as  is  usually  given  in  a  traveler's  narrative.  No 
more  had  ever  been  asked  before. 

Under  ordinary  circumstances,  these  instruments 
and  papers  would  not  have  been  of  great  value,  but 
under  the  public  excitement  their  importance  was  im- 
mensely enhanced. 

I  had  publicly  announced  that  Mr.  Whitney  would 
bring  these  with  him  on  the  boat  in  which  he  was  to 
return.  Had  there  been  no  notes  and  no  instruments,  I 
hardly  should  have  said  this  were  I  perpetrating  a  fraud, 
for  I  should  have  known  that  the  failure  of  Mr.  Whitney 
to  supply  these  would  provoke  widespread  suspicion. 

In  a  friendly  spirit  toward  the  late  Mr.  Bridges  and  his  Indians,  I  per- 
suaded the  Belgians  at  great  expense  to  publish  the  work.  It  was  written 
in  the  old  Ellis  system  of  orthography,  which  is  not  generally  understood. 
Working  on  this  material  for  one  year  without  pay,  I  changed  it  to 
ordinary  English  orthography,  but  made  few  other  alterations.  The  book 
is  not  yet  printed,  but  part  of  it  is  in  press.  The  introduction  was  printed 
five  years  ago,  and  among  the  first  paragraphs  appear  these  words: 

"My  visit  among  the  tribe  of  Fuegians  was  not  of  sufficient  length  to 
make  a  thorough  study,  nor  had  I  the  opportunity  to  collect  much  data 
from  Indians,  but  I  was  singularly  fortunate  in  being  in  the  company  of 
Mr.  Thomas  Bridges  and  Mr.  John  Lawrence,  men  who  have  made  these 
people  their  life  study.  The  credit  of  collecting  and  making  this  Yahagan 
Grammar  and  Vocabulary  belongs  solely  to  Mr.  Bridges,  who  devoted  most 
of  his  time  during  thirty-seven  years  to  recording  this  material.  My  work 
is  limited  to  a  slight  re-arrangement  of  the  words,  a  few  additions  of  notes 
and  words,  and  a  conversion  of  the  Ellis  phonetic  characters  in  which  the 
native  words  were  written  into  ordinary  English  orthography.  It  is  hoped 
that  this  study  of  Yahagan  language,  with  a  few  of  their  tales  and  tradi- 
tions, will,  with  a  report  of  the  French  Expedition,  make  a  fitting  end  to 
an  important  record  of  a  vanishing  people." 

Then  follows  a  short  favorable  biography  of  the  man  whose  work  I 
was  accused  of  stealing. 


COPENHAGEN  TO  UNITED  STATES  499 

This  is  just  what  happened.  Had  I  foreseen  the  trou- 
ble that  resulted,  I  should  have  taken  my  instruments 
with  me  to  Upernavik,  and  have  supplied  my  observa- 
tions and  notes  at  once. 

As  I  have  said  before,  I  believed  in  an  accomplish- 
ment which  I  felt  was  largely  personal,  for  which  a 
world  excitement  was  not  warranted  and  in  which  I  had 
such  a  sure  confidence  that  I  never  thought  of  abso- 
lutely accurate  proof.  This  was  my  folly — for  which 
fate  made  me  pay.  Imagine  my  dismay,  the  heart- 
sickness  which  seized  me  when,  through  the  din  of  tumult 
and  excitement,  in  the  midst  of  suspicion,  came  the  news 
that  Mr.  Whitney  had  been  forced  by  Mr.  Peary  to 
take  from  the  Roosevelt  and 'bury  the  very  material 
with  which  I  might  have  dispelled  suspicion  and  quelled 
the  storm  of  unmerited  abuse. 

The  instruments  carried  on  my  northern  trip,  and 
left  with  Mr.  Whitney,  and  which  he  had  seen,  consisted 
of  one  French  sextant;  one  aluminum  surveying  com- 
pass, with  azimuth  attachment,  bought  of  Keuffer  & 
Essen,  New  York;  one  glass  artifical  horizon,  set  in  a 
thin  metal  frame,  adjusted  by  spirit  levels  and  thumb- 
screws, bought  of  Hutchinson,  Boston;  one  aneroid 
barometer,  aluminum,  bought  of  Hicks;  an  aluminum 
case  with  maximum  and  minimum  spirit  thermometer; 
other  thermometers,  and  one  liquid  compass. 

Other  ^instruments  used  about  stations  were  also 
left.  With  these  were  papers  giving  some  instrumental 
corrections,  readings,  and  comparisons,  and  other  occa- 
sional notes,  and  a  small  diary,  mostly  loose  leaves,  con- 
taining some  direct  field  reading  of  instruments  and 
meteorological  data.  These  took  up  very  little  space; 


500  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

and,  if  I  remember  correctly,  all  were  snugly  packed  in 
one  of  the  instrument  cases. 

Mr.  Whitney  especially  asked,  as  a  personal  favor, 
the  honor  of  caring  for  my  flag.  Later,  after  his  return, 
he  said  that  as  Mr.  Peary  had  refused  to  let  him  take 
aboard  my  things,  he  had  no  alternative  but  to  bury 
them  at  Etah.  I  have  no  complaint  to  make  against 
Mr.  Peary  about  this.  He  was  at  liberty  to  pick  the 
freight  of  his  own  ship.  But  he  later  said:  "His  [Dr. 
Cook's]  leaving  of  his  records  at  Etah  was.  a  scheme  by 
which  he  could  claim  that  they  were  lost."  If  Mr. 
Peary  knew  this,  why  did  he  not  bring  them? 

At  the  time  I  felt  crippled;  my  feeling  of  disgust 
with  the  problem,  with*  myself,  and  with  the  situation 
began.  It  would  be  impossible  to  give  in  my  report  a 
continuous  line  of  observations.  I  had  no  corrections 
for  the  instruments.  I  knew  they  might  vary.  I  had  no 
means  of  checking  them.  I  had  some  copies  of  the  origi- 
nal data,  but  they  were  not  complete.  I  should  have  to 
rest  my  whole  case  on  a  report  with  reduced  observa- 
tions, for  I  knew  it  would  not  be  possible  to  send  a  ship 
to  Etah  until  the  following  year.  And  I  also  knew  that 
if  Eskimos  were  not  given  strong  explicit  instructions 
all  would  be  lost. 

Meanwhile,  many  apparently  trivial  accusations 
against  me  were  being  widely  discussed,  which,  never 
refuted,  had  their  weight  in  the  long  run  in  discrediting 
my  good  faith.  On  every  side  I  was  attacked,  not  so 
much  for  unintentional  error,  as  for  deliberate  false- 
hood. 

In  the  bewildering  days  that  followed — during 
which  I  traveled  to  various  cities  to  fulfill  lecture  en- 


' 


COPENHAGEN  TO  UNITED  STATES  501 

gagements — I  felt  alone,  a  victim  of  such  pressure  as,  I 
believe,  has  seldom  been  the  fate  of  any  human  being. 

Friends  confused  me  as  much  as  the  attacks  of  foes. 
Some  advised  one  thing;  others  another;  my  brain  stag- 
gered with  their  well-meaning  advice.  Most  of  them 
wanted  me  to  "light  out,"  as  they  expressed  it,  and 
attack  Mr.  Peary.  A  number  suggested  the  formation 
of  an  organization,  the  work  of  which  would  be  to  issue 
counter  attacks  on  Mr.  Peary,  to  be  written  by  various 
men,  and  to  reply  systematically  to  charges  made 
against  me.  Such  a  course  was  distasteful  to  me,  and, 
furthermore,  the  selfish,  envious  origin  of  all  of  Mr. 
Peary's  charges  seemed  evident. 

Many  of  the  other  attacks  seemed  so  ridiculous  that 
I  felt  no  one  would  believe  them — which  was  another  of 
my  many  mistakes.  The  more  serious  charges  I  be- 
lieved could  wait  until  I  had  time  to  sit  down  and  reply 
to  them  at  length.  I  felt  the  futility  of  any  fragment- 
ary retorts.  At  no  time  did  I  have  an  intelligent  grasp 
of  the  situation,  of  the  excited  and  exaggerated  interest 
of  the  public,  or  of  the  fluctuating  state  of  public 
opinion. 

In  my  many  years  of  Arctic  work  I  had  gathered 
pictures  of  almost  every  phase  of  Arctic  life  and  scene ; 
on  subsequent  trips,  unless  for  some  special  reason,  I  did 
not  duplicate  photographs  of  impregnable,  unmeltable 
headlands,  or  of  walrus,  or  icebergs  which  I  considered 
typical.  In  the  early  rush  for  illustrative  material  I 
gave  a  number  of  these  to  the  Herald,  stating  they  were 
scenes  I  had  passed,  but  which  had  been  taken  on  an 
earlier  expedition.  By  some  mistake,  which  is  not 
unusual  in  newspaper  offices,  one  of  these  pictures  was 


502  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

put  under  a  caption,  "Pictures  of  Dr.  Cook's  Polar 
Trip,"  or  something  to  this  effect.  Whereupon,  Mr. 
Herbert  Bridgman,  secretary  of  the  Peary  Arctic  Club, 
shouted  aloud,  "Fraud!"  and  others  took  up  the  cry. 
A  further  charge  that  these  pictures  were  not  mine  at 
all,  but  had  been  stolen  or  borrowed  from  Herbert  Berri, 
was  advanced — an  absolute  untruth,  as  I  had  the  nega- 
tives, from  which  these  pictures  were  made,  in  my  pos- 
session. 

What,  in  those  early  days,  had  seemed  a  serious 
criticism  offered  against  my  claim,  was  that  I  had  ex- 
ceeded possible  speed  limits  by  asserting  an  average  of 
about  fifteen  miles  a  day.  The  English  critics  were 
particularly  severe.  According  to  their  reading,  this 
had  never  been  done  before.  Admiral  Melville  had 
taken  this  up  in  America  before  my  arrival;  by  the 
time  I  got  to  New  York,  Mr.  Peary  had  made  a  report 
of  twenty  to  forty-five  miles  daily  under  similar  condi- 
tions, and  I  asked  myself  the  reason  of  the  sudden  hush. 

Much  space  was  now  given  to  the  criticism  by 
learned  men  of  my  giving  seconds  in  observations.  The 
point  was  taken  that  as  you  near  the  Pole  the  degrees 
of  longitude  narrow,  and  seconds  are  of  no  consequence. 
Therefore  I  was  charged  with  trying  to  fake  an  impos- 
sible accuracy.  I  always  regarded  seconds  as  of  little 
consequence,  put  them  down  as  a  matter  of  routine— 
for  in  that  snow-blinding,  bewildering  North  I  worked 
more  like  a  machine  than  a  reasoning  being — and  now 
the  inadvertent  use  of  these  was  used  to  cast  suspicion 
upon  me. 

With  this  attack,  like  echoes  from  many  places, 
came  reiterations  of  the  criticism,  which,  polly-like,  was 


COPENHAGEN  TO  UNITED  STATES  503 

taken  up  by  Rear- Admiral  Chester.  Professor  Stock- 
well  of  Cleveland  had  earlier  brought  out  this  academic 
discussion.  Because  I  had  seen  the  midnight  sun  for 
the  first  time  on  April  7  it  was  claimed  I  must  have 
been  at  a  more  southern  point  of  the  globe  than  I  be- 
lieved. At  the  time  it  seemed  the  only  serious  scientific 
criticism  of  my  reports  which  was  used  against  me. 

Whether  I  was  on  a  more  southerly  point  of  the 
globe  than  I  believed  or  not,  I  had  not  used  the  midnight 
sun,  seen  through  a  mystic  maze  of  unknowable  refrac- 
tion, to  determine  position;  to  do  so  would  have  been 
impossible.  With  a  constant  moving  and  grinding  of 
the  ice,  causing  opening  lanes  of  water,  from  which  the 
inequality  of  temperature  drew  an  evaporation  like 
steam  from  a  volcano,  it  is  impossible  at  this  season  to 
see  a  low  sun  with  a  clear  horizon.  One  looks  through 
an  opaque  veil  of  blinding  crystals.  Every  Arctic  trav- 
eler knows  that  even  when  the  sun  is  seen  on  a  clear 
horizon,  as  it  returns  after  the  long  night,  his  eyes  are 
deceived — he  does  not  see  the  sun  at  all,  but  a  refracted 
image  caused  by  the  optical  deception  of  atmospheric 
distortions.  For  this  reason,  as  I  knew,  all  observa- 
tions of  the  sun  when  very  low  are  worthless  as  a  means 
of  determining  position.  The  assumption  that  I  had 
done  this  seemed  mere  foolishness  to  me  at  the  time. 

Staggered  by  the  blow  that  Whitney  had  buried  my 
instruments  in  the  North,  the  recurring  thoughts  of 
these  harassing  charges  certainly  had  no  soothing  effect. 

Alone,  I  was  unable  to  cope  with  matters,  anyway. 
I  under-estimated  the  effect  of  the  cumulating  attacks. 
Oppressed  by  the  undercurrent  feeling  that  it  was  all  a 
fuss  about  very  little,  a  thing  of  insignificant  worth,  and 


504  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

disturbed  by  the  growing  uncertainty  of  proving  such  a 
claim  to  the  point  of  hair-breadth  accuracy  by  any 
figures,  despair  overcame  me. 

I  was  so  busy  I  could  not  pause  to  think,  and  was 
conscious  only  of  the  rush,  the  labor,  the  worry.  I  no 
longer  slept;  indigestion  naturally  seized  me  as  its  vic- 
tim. A  mental  depression  brought  desperate  premoni- 
tions. 

I  developed  a  severe  case  of  laryngitis  in  Washing- 
ton; it  got  worse  as  I  went  to  Baltimore  and  Pittsburg. 
At  St.  Louis,  where  I  talked  before  an  audience  said  to 
number  twelve  thousand  persons,  I  could  hardly  raise 
my  voice  above  a  whisper.  The  lecture  was  given  with 
physical  anguish.  I  was  feverish  and  mentally  dazed. 
Thereafter,  day  by  day,  my  thoughts  became  less  coher- 
ent ;  I,  more  like  a  machine. 

I  do  not  exaggerate  when  I  say  that  there  was 
practically  not  one  hour  of  pleasure  in  those  troubled 
days.  The  dinner  which  was  given  by  the  Arctic 
travelers  at  the  Waldorf-Astoria  pleased  me  more  than 
anything  during  the  entire  experience.  I  felt  the  close 
presence  of  hundreds  of  warm  friends;  I  was  conscious 
of  their  good  will. 

I  can  recall  the  ceremony  of  presenting  the  keys  of 
the  City  of  New  York  to  me,  but  I  was  so  confused  and 
half  ill  that  I  was  not  in  a  condition  to  appreciate  the 
honor. 

After  I  had  been  on  my  lecture  tour  for  a  few 
weeks,  I  began  to  feel  persecuted.  On  every  side  I 
sensed  hostility;  the  sight  of  crowds  filled  me  with  a 
growing  sort  of  terror.  I  did  not  realize  at  the  time 
that  I  was  passing  from  periods  of  mental  depression  to 


COPENHAGEN  TO  UNITED  STATES  505 

dangerous  periods  of  nervous  tension.  I  was  pursued 
by  reporters,  people  with  craning  necks,  good-natured 
demonstrations  of  friendliness  that  irritated  me.  In  the 
trains  I  viewed  the  whirling  landscape  without,  and  felt 
myself  part  of  it — as  a  delirious  man  swept  and  hurtled 
through  space. 

I  suppose  I  answered  questions  intelligently;  like 
an  automaton  delivered  my  lectures,  shook  hands.  I 
have  been  told  I  smiled  pleasantly  always — mentally  I 


Author's  Note. — I  have  never  attempted  to  disprove  Mr.  Peary's, 
claim  to  having  reached  the  North  Pole.  I  prefer  to  believe  that  Mn 
Peary  reached  the  North  Pole. 

So  avid  have  been  my  enemies,  however,  to  cast  discredit  upon. my 
own  achievement,  by  such  trivial  and  petty  charges,  that  it  seems  curious, 
they  have  never  noticed  or  have  remained  silent  about  many  striking  and 
staggering  discrepancies  in  Mr.  Peary's  own  published  account  of  his 
journey. 

In  Mr.  Peary's  book,  entitled  "The  North  Pole;  Its  Discovery,  1909," 
published  by  Frederick  A.  Stokes  Company,  on  page  302,  appears  the 
following: 

"We  turned  our  backs  upon  the  Pole  at  about  four  o'clock  of  the 
afternoon  of  April  7." 

According  to  a  statement  made  on  page  304,  Mr.  Peary  took  time  on. 
his  return  trip  to  take  a  sounding  of  the  sea  five  miles  from  the  Pole. 

On  page  305,  Mr.  Peary  says:  "Friday,  April  9,  was  a  wild  day.  All 
day  long  the  wind  blew  strong  from  the  north-northeast,  increasing  finally 
to  a  gale."  And  on  page  306:  "We  camped  that  night  at  87°  47'." 

Mr.  Peary  thus  claims  to  have  traveled  from  tke  Pole  to  this  point,  a 
distance  of  133  nautical  miles,  or  153  statute  miles,  in  a  little  over  two- 
days.  This  would  average  76^  statute  miles  a  day.  Could  a  pedestrian 
make  such  speed?  During  this  time  Mr.  Peary  camped  twice,  to  make 
tea,  eat  lunch,  feed  the  dogs,  and  rest — several  hours  in  each  camp. 

Why  I  should  Clever  haVe  gone  out  of  sight  of  land  for  more  than, 
two  days,  as  he  has  Charged,  when  such  miraculous  speed  can  be  made  on  the 
circumpolar  sea,  is  something  Mr.  Peary  might  find  interesting  reasons  to 
explain. 

On  page  310,  Mr.  Peary  says:  "We  were  coming  down  the  North 
Pole  hill  in  fine  shape  now,  and  another  double  march,  April  16-17,  brought 
us  to  our  eleventh  upward  camp  at  85°  8',  one  hundred  and  twenty-one 
miles  from  Cape  Columbia." 

According  to  this,  Mr.  Peary  covered  the  distance  from  87°  47',  on 
April  9,  to  85°  8',  on  April  17— a  distance  of  159  nautical  miles  in  eight 
day.  This  averaged  twenty  miles  a  day. 

On  page  316,  he  says:  "It  was  almost  exactly  six  o'clock  on  the 
morning  of  April  23  when  we  reached  the  igloo  of  'Crane  City,'  at  Cape 
Columbia,  and  the  work  was  done." 


506  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

was  never  conscious  of  a  smile.  It  is  strange  how,  ma- 
chine-like, a  man  can  conduct  himself  like  a  reasonable 
being  when,  mentally,  he  is  at  sea.  I  have  read  a  great 
deal  about  the  subconscious  mind;  on  no  other  theory 
can  I  account  for  my  rational  conduct  in  public  at  the 
time.  Really,  as  I  view  myself  from  the  angle  of  the 
present,  I  marvel  that  a  man  so  distraught  did  not  do 
desperate  things. 


Mr.  Peary  left  85°  8'  on  April  17,  according  to  his  statement,  and 
traveled  121  miles  to  Cape  Columbia  in  six  days,  arriving  on  April  23. 
This  last  stretch  was  at  the  rate  of  twenty  miles  a  day.  To  sum  up,  he 
traveled  from  the  North  Pole,  according  to  his  statements,  to  land,  as 
follows : 

The  first  133  nautical  miles  southward  in  two  days,  at  the  rate  of 
'66  ryiutical  miles,  or  76y2  statute  miles,  a  day;  the  last  279  nautical  miles 
in  fourteen  days,  an  average  of  20  miles  a  day. 

According"  to  Peary's  book,  Bartlett  left  him  at  87°  46',  and  Mr. 
Peary  started  on  his  final  spurt  to  the  Pole  a  little  after  midnight  on  the 
morning  of  April  2.  By  arriving  at  the  point  where  he  left  Bartlett  on  the 
evening  of  April  9,  he  would  have  made  the  distance  of  270  miles  to 
the  Pole  from  this  point  and  back,  in  a  little  over  seven  days. 

In  the  New  York  World  of  October  3,  1910,  page  3,  column  6,  Matthew 
Henson  makes  the  following  statement:  "On  the  way  up  we  had  to  break 
.a  trail,  and  averaged  only  eighteen  to  twenty  miles  a  day.  On  the  way 
back  we  had  our  own  trail  to  within  one  hundred  miles  of  land,  and  then 
Captain  Bartlett's  trail.  We  made  from  twenty  to  forty  miles  a  day." 

At  the  rate  of  twenty  miles  a  day  on  the  way  up,  which  Henson 
claims  was  made,  it  would  have  taken  6  days  and  18  hours  to  cover  the 
distance  of  135  miles  from  87°  47'  to  the  Pole.  Adding  the  thirty  hours 
Mr.  Peary  claims  he  spent  at  the  Pole  for  observations,  eight  days  would 
have  elapsed  before  they  started  back.  Peary  says  the  round  trip  of  270 
miles  from  87°  47'  N.  to  the  Pole  and  the  return  to  the  same  latitude  was 
done  in  seven  days  and  a  few  hours. 

Why  has  Mr.  Peary  never  been  asked  to  explain  his  miraculous  speed 
and  the  discrepancy  between  his  statement  and  Henson's? 

Henson  was  Mr.  Peary's  sole  witness.  When  Mr.  Peary,  in  a  framed- 
up  document,  endeavors  to  disprove  my  claim  by  quoting  my  Eskimos,  it 
would  be  just  as  fair  to  apply  Henson's  words  to  disprove  Peary. 

Moreover,  inasmuch  as  Mr.  Peary's  partisans  attacked  my  speed 
limits  when  I  made  my  first  reports,  does  it  not  seem  curious  indeed  that 
they  now  accept  as  infallible,  and  ex  cathedra,  the  published  reports  of 
the  almost  supernatural  feat  in  covering  distance  made  by  Mr.  Peary? 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  CONTROVERSY 


PEARY  AND  HIS  PAST HIS  DEALING  WITH  RIVAL  EXPLOR- 
ERS  THE  DEATH   OF   ASTRUP THE   THEFT   OF   THE 

"GREAT  IRON  STONE,"  THE  NATIVES'  SOLE  SOURCE  OF 
IRON 

XXXIII 

ACTIONS  WHICH  CALL  FOR  INVESTIGATION 

Aiming  to  be  retired  from  the  Navy  as  a  Captain, 
with  a  comfortable  pension;  aiming  eventually  to  wear 
the  stripes  of  a  Rear- Admiral,  which  necessitated  a  pro- 
motion over  the  heads  of  others  in  the  normal  line  of 
advancement,  a  second  Polar  victory,  which  was  all  that 
Peary  could  honestly  claim,  was  not  sufficient.  Some- 
thing must  be  done  to  destroy  in  the  public  eye  the 
merits  of  my  achievement  for  the  first  attainment  of  the 
Pole.  I  had  reached  the  Pole  on  April  21,  1908.  Mr. 
Peary's  claims  were  for  April  6,  1909,  a  year  later.  To 
destroy  the  advantage  of  priority  of  my  conquest,  and 
to  establish  himself  as  the  first  and  only  one  who  had 
reached  the  Pole,  was  now  the  one  predominant  effort 
to  which  Mr.  Peary  and  his  coterie  of  conspirators  set 
themselves.  To  this  end  the  cables  were  now  made  to 
burn  with  an  abusive  campaign,  which  the  press,  eager 
for  sensations,  took  up  from  land's  end  to  land's  end, 


508  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

even  to  the  two  worlds.  The  wireless  operators  picked 
up  messages  that  were  being  thrown  from  ship  to  ship 
and  from  point  to  point.  Each  carried  unkind  insinua- 
tions coming  from  the  lips  of  Mr.  Peary.  The  press 
and  the  public  were  induced  to  believe  that  Peary's 
words  came  from  one  who  was  himself  above  the  shadow 
of  suspicion.  Their  efforts,  however,  as  we  will  see 
later,  did  not  differ  from  the  battle  of  envy  forced 
against  others  before  me,  but  it  was  now  done  more 
openly. 

It  was  difficult  to  remain  silent  against  such  world- 
wide slanders.  But  I  reasoned  that  truth  would  ulti- 
mately prevail,  and  that  the  rebound  of  the  American 
spirit  of  fair  play  would  quell  the  storm. 

I  had  known  for  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  the 
man  for  whom  the  press  now  attacked  me.  I  had  served 
on  two  of  his  expeditions  without  pay;  I  had  watched 
his  successes  and  his  failures;  I  had  admired  his  strong 
qualities,  and  I  had  shivered  with  the  shocks  of  his 
wrongdoings.  But  still  I  did  not  feel  that  anything 
was  to  be  gained  by  retaliative  abuse;  and  the  truth 
about  him,  out  of  charity,  I  hesitated  to  tell.  No,  I 
argued,  this  warfare  of  the  many  against  one,  under  the 
dictates  of  envy,  must  ultimately  bring  to  light  its  own 
injustice. 

I  had  always  reasoned  that  a  quiet,  dignified,  non- 
assailing  bearing  would  be  most  effective  in  a  battle  of 
this  kind.  Contrary  to  the  general  belief  at  the  time, 
this  was  not  done  out  of  respect  for  Mr.  Peary;  it 
seemed  the  best  means  to  a  worthier  end.  But  I  did  not 
know  at  this  time  that  the  press,  dog-like,  jumps  upon 
him  who  maintains  a  non-attacking  attitude.  In  mod- 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  CONTROVERSY  509 

ern  times,  the  old  Christian  philosophy  of  turning  the 
other  cheek,  as  I  have  found,  does  not  give  the  desired 
results. 

The  press,  which,  at  my  home-coming,  had  lavished 
praise  and  glowing  panegyric,  now,  as  promptly,  swung 
completely  around  and  heaped  upon  my  head  terms 
of  opprobrium  and  obloquy.  Faked  news  items  were 
issued  to  discredit  me  by  Peary's  associates;  editors 
devoted  space  to  jibes  and  sarcasms  at  my  expense; 
clever  writers  and  cartoonists  did  their  best  to  make  my 
name  a  humorous  byword  with  my  countrymen.  Much 
of  this  I  did  not  know  until  long  after. 

The  suddenness  of  all  this — the  terrible  injustice 
and  unreasonableness  of  it — simply  overwhelmed  me. 
Arriving  from  the  cruel  North,  completely  spent  in 
body  and  in  mind,  the  rest  that  I  was  urgently  in  need 
of  had  been  constantly  denied  me.  Instead,  I  had  been 
caught  up  and  held  within  a  perfect  maelstrom  of  excite- 
ment. That  excitement  still  ran  like  fever  in  my  veins. 
The  plaudits  of  the  multitude  were  still  ringing  in  my 
ears  when  this  horror  of  a  world's  contumely  burst  on 
my  head.  I  could  only  bow  my  head  and  let  the  storm 
spend  itself  about  me.  Sick  at  heart  and  dazed  in  mind, 
conscious  only  of  a  vague  disgust  with  all  the  world  and 
myself,  I  longed  for  respite  and  forgetfulness  within 
the  bosom  of  my  family. 

So,  quietly,  I  decided  to  retire  for  a  year,  out  of 
reach  of  the  yellow  papers;  out  of  reach  of  the  grind  of 
the  pro- Peary  mill  of  infamy,  still  maintaining  silence 
rather  than  stoop  to  the  indignity  of  showing  up  the 
dark  side  of  Mr.  Peary's  character.  Having  returned, 
I  hesitate  to  do  it  now;  but  the  weaving  of  the  leprous 


510  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

blanket  of  infamy  with  which  Peary  and  his  supporters 
attempted  to  cover  me  cannot  be  understood  unless  we 
look  through  Mr.  Peary's  eyes — regard  other  explorers 
as  he  regarded  them;  regard  the  North  as  his  inalien- 
able property  as  he  did,  and  regard  his  infamous,  high- 
handed injustices  as  right. 

I  have  now  decided  to  uncover  the  incentive  of  this 
one-sided  fight  to  which  I  have  so  long  maintained  a 
non-attacking  attitude.  I  had  hoped,  almost  against 
hope,  that  the  public  would  ultimately  understand, 
without  a  word  from  me,  the  humbug  of  the  mudslingers 
who  were  attempting  to  defame  my  character.  I  had 
felt  sure  that  the  hand  which  did  the  besmearing  was 
silhouetted  clearly  against  the  blackness  of  its  own  mak- 
ing. But  the  storm  of  a  sensation-seeking  press  later 
so  thickened  the  atmosphere  that  the  public,  from  which 
one  has  a  sure  guarantee  of  fair  play,  was  denied  a 
clear  view. 

Now  that  the  storm  has  spent  its  force;  now  that 
the  hand  which  did  the  mudslinging  has  within  its  grasp 
the  unearned  gain  which  it  sought;  now  that  a  clear 
point  of  observation  can  be  presented,  I  am  compelled, 
with  much  reluctance  and  distaste,  to  reveal  the 
unpleasant  and  unknown  past  of  the  man  who  tried  to 
ruin  me;  showing  how  unscrupulous  and  brutal  he  was 
to  others  before  me;  with  evidence  in  hand,  I  shall 
reveal  how  he  wove  his  web  of  defamation  and  how  his 
friends  conspired  with  him  in  the  darkest,  meanest  and 
most  brazen  conspiracy  in  the  history  of  exploration. 

In  doing  this,  my  aim  is  not  to  challenge  Mr. 
Peary's  claim,  but  to  throw  light  on  unwritten  pages  of 
history,  which  pages  furnish  the  key  to  unlock  the  long- 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  CONTROVERSY  511 

closed  door  of  the  Polar  controversy  and  the  pro-Peary 
conspiracy. 

From  the  earliest  days,  Mr.  Peary's  effort  to  reach 
the  Pole  was  undertaken  primarily  for  purposes  of 
personal  commercial  gain.  For  twenty  years  he  has 
passed  the  hat  along  lines  of  easy  money.  That  hat 
would  be  passing  to-day  if  the  game  had  not  been,  in  the 
opinion  of  many,  spoiled  by  my  suceess. 

For  nearly  twenty  years  he  sought  to  be  promoted 
over  the  heads  of  stay-at-home  but  hardworking  naval 
officers.  During  all  of  this  time,  while  on  salary  as  a 
naval  officer,  he  was  away  engaged  in  private  enter- 
prises from  which  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  went 
into  his  pockets.  By  wire-pulling  and  lobbying  he 
succeeded  in  having  the  American  Navy  pay  him  an  un- 
earned salary.  Such  a  man  could  not  afford  to  divide 
the  fruits  of  Polar  attainment  with  another. 

In  1891,  as  the  steamer  Kite  went  north,  Mr.  Peary 
began  to  evince  the  brutal,  selfish  spirit  which  later  was 
shown  to  every  explorer  who  had  the  misfortune  to  cross 
his  trail.  Nansen  had  crossed  Greenland;  his  splendid 
success  was  in  the  public  eye.  Mr.  Peary  attempted  to 
belittle  the  merited  applause  by  saying  that  Nansen  had 
borrowed  the  "Peary  system."  But  Peary  had  bor- 
rowed the  ISTordenskiold  system,  without  giving  credit. 
A  few  months  later,  Mr.  John  M.  Verhoeff,  the  meteo- 
rologist of  the  Kite  expedition,  was  accorded  such  un- 
brotherly  treatment  that  he  left  his  body  in  a  glacial 
crevasse  in  preference  to  coming  home  on  the  same  ship 
with  Mr.  Peary.  This  man  had  paid  $2,000  for  the 
privilege  of  being  Peary's  companion. 

Eivind  Astrup,  another  companion  of  Peary,  a  few 


512  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

years  later  was  publicly  denounced  because  he  had 
written  a  book  on  his  own  scientific  observations  and 
did  work  which  Peary  had  himself  neglected  to  do. 
This  attempt  to  discredit  a  young,  sensitive  explorer 
was  followed  by  his  mental  unbalancement  and  suicide. 
About  1897,  Peary  took  from  the  people  of  the 
Farthest  North  the  Eskimos'  treasured  "Star  Stone." 
At  some  remote  period  in  the  unknown  history  of  the 
frigid  North,  thousands  of  years  ago,  when,  possibly, 
the  primitive  forefathers  of  the  Eskimos  were  perishing 
from  inability  to  obtain  food  in  that  fierce  war  waged 
between  Nature  and  crude,  blindly  struggling,  abo- 
riginal life  because  of  a  lack  of  weapons  with  which  to 
kill,  there  swiftly,  roaringly,  descended  from  the  mys- 
terious skies  a  gigantic  meteoric  mass  of  burning,  white- 
hot  iron.  Whence  it  came,  those  dazed  and  startled 
people  knew  not ;  they  regarded  it,  as  their  descendants 
have  regarded  it,  with  baffled  mystified  terror;  later, 
with  reverence,  gratitude,  and  a  feeling  akin  to  awe. 
Gazing  skyward,  in  the  long,  starlit  nights,  there  un- 
doubtedly welled  up  surgingly  in  the  wild  hearts  of 
these  innocent,  Spartan  children  of  nature,  a  feeling  of 
vague,  instinctive  wonder  at  the  Power  which  swung 
the  boreal  lamps  in  heaven;  which  moves  the  worlds  in 
space;  which  sweeps  in  the  northern  winds,  and  which, 
for  the  creatures  of  its  creation,  apparently  consciously, 
and  often  by  'means  seemingly  miraculous,  provides 
methods  of  obtaining  the  sources  of  life.  As  the  meteor 
and  its  two  smaller  fragments  cooled,  the  natives,  by 
the  innate  and  adaptive  ingenuity  of  aboriginal  man, 
learned  to  chip  masses  from  it,  from  which  were  shaped 
knives  and  arrows  and  spearheads.  It  became  their 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  CONTROVERSY  513 

mine  of  treasure,  more  precious  than  gold;  it  was  their 
only  means  of  making  weapons  for  obtaining  that  which 
sustained  life.  With  new  weapons,  they  developed  the 
art  of  spear-casting  and  arrow- throwing.  As  the  cen- 
turies passed,  animals  fell  easy  prey  to  their  skill;  the 
starvation  of  elder  ages  gave  way  to  plenty. 

The  arm  of  God,  it  is  said  in  the  Scriptures,  is  long. 
From  the  far  skies  it  extended  to  these  people  of  an 
ice-sheeted,  rigorous  land,  that  they  might  survive,  this 
miraculous  treasure.  It  seemed,  however,  that  the  arm 
of  man,  in  its  greed,  proved  likewise  long;  and  as  the 
strange  providence  which  gave  these  people  their  chief 
means  of  killing  was  kind,  so  the  arm  of  man  was  cruel. 

In  1894,  R.  E.  Peary,  regarding  the  Arctic  world 
as  his  own,  the  people  as  his  vassals,  came  north,  and  a 
year  later  took  from  these  natives,  without  their  con- 
sent, the  two  smaller  fragments.  '  In  1897  he  took  "The 
Tent,"  or  Great  Iron  Stone,  the  natives'  last  and  one 
source  of  mineral  wealth  and  ancestral  treasure.  That 
it  was  these  people's  great  source  of  securing  metal 
meant  nothing  to  him;  that  it  was  a  scientific  curio, 
whereby  he  might  secure  a  specious  credit  from  the 
well-fed  armchair  gentlemen  of  science  at  home,  meant 
much  to  the  man  who  later  did  not  hesitate  to  employ 
methods  of  dishonor  to  try  to  secure  exclusive  credit  of 
the  achievement  of  the  Pole.  Just  as  he  later  tried  to 
rob  me  of  honor,  so  he  ruthlessly  took  from  these  people 
a  thing  that  meant  abundance  of  game — and  game 
there  meant  life. 

The  great  "Iron  Stone"  was  hauled  aboard  the 
S.  S.  Hope,  and  brought  to  New  York.  Today  it  re- 
poses in  the  Museum  of  Natural  History — a  bulky, 


514  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

black  heap  of  metal,  which  can  be  viewed  any  day  by  the 
well-fed  and  curious.  In  the  North,  where  he  will 
not  go  again  to  give  his  mythical  "abundance  of  guns 
and  ammunition,"  the  Eskimos  need  the  metal  which 
was  sold  to  Mrs.  Morris  K.  Jesup  (who  presented  it  to 
the  museum)  for  $40,000.  That  money  went  into  Mr. 
Peary's  pockets.  In  a  land  where  laws  existed  this  act 
would  be  regarded  as  a  high-handed,  monumental  and 
dishonorable  theft.  One  who  might  attempt  now  to 
purloin  the  ill-gotten  hulk  from  the  museum  would  be 
prosecuted.  Taken  from  the  people  to  whose  ances- 
tors it  was  sent,  as  if  by  a  providence  that  is  divine,  and 
to  whom  it  meant  life,  it  gave  Mr.  Peary  so-called  scien- 
tific honors  among  his  friends.  In  the  name  of  religion, 
it  has  been  said,  many  crimes  have  been  committed.  It 
remained  for  this  man  to  reveal  what  atrocious  things 
could  be  done  in  the  fair  name  of  science. 

At  about  the  same  time  a  group  of  seven  or  eight 
Eskimos  were  put  aboard  a  ship  against  their  will  and 
brought  to  New  York  for  museum  purposes.  They 
were  locked  up  in  a  cellar  in  New  York,  awaiting  a 
market  place.  Before  the  profit-time  arrived,  because 
of  unhygienic  surroundings  and  improper  food,  all  but 
one  died.  When  in  the  grip  of  death,  through  a  Mrs. 
Smith,  who  ministered  to  their  last  wants,  they 
appealed  with  tears  in  their  eyes  for  some  word  from 
Mr.  Peary.  They  begged  that  he  extend  them  the 
attention  of  visiting  them  before  their  eyes  closed  to  a 
world  of  misery  and  trouble.  There  came  no  word  and 
no  responsive  call  from  the  man  who  was  responsible 
for  their  suffering.  Of  seven  or  eight  innocent  wild 
people,  but  one  little  child  survived.  That  one— 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  CONTROVERSY  515 

Mene — was  later  even  denied  a  passage  back  to  his 
fathers'  land  by  Mr.  Peary. 

A  few  years  later,  the  Danish  Literary  Expedition 
visited  the  northernmost  Eskimos  in  their  houses.  The 
splendid  hospitality  shown  the  Danes  by  the  Eskimos 
saved  their  lives.  The  Danish  people,  aiming  to 
express  their  gratitude  for  this  unselfish  Eskimo  kind- 
ness, sent  a  ship  to  their  shores  on  the  following  year, 
loaded  with  presents,  at  an  expenditure  of  many  thou- 
sands of  kroner.  That  ship,  under  the  direction  of  Cap- 
tain Schoubye,  left  at  North  Star  great  quantities  of 
food,  iron  and  wood.  After  the  Danes  had  turned  their 
backs,  Mr.  Peary  came  along  and  deliberately,  high- 
handedly, took  many  of  the  things.  This  story  is  told 
today  by  every  member  of  the  tribe  whom  Peary  claims 
to  have  befriended,  whom  he  calls  "my  people." 

The  sad  story  of  the  unavoidable  deaths  by  starva- 
tion of  the  members  of  General  Greely's  Expedition  has 
for  years  been  issued  and  reissued  to  the  press  by  Mr. 
Peary  and  his  press  agents,  in  such  form  as,  to  discredit 
General  Greely  and  his  co-workers.  His  own  inhuman 
doings  about  Cape  Sabine  and  the  old  Greely  stamping- 
grounds  have  been  suppressed. 

In  1901  the  ship  Erik  left  Mr.  Peary,  with  a  large 
group  of  native  helpers,  near  Cape  Sabine.  An 
epidemic,  brought  by  the  Peary  ship,  soon  after  attacked 
the  Eskimos.  Many  died;  others  survived  to  endure  a 
slow  torture.  Peary  had  no  doctor  and  no  medicine. 
In  the  year  previous,  Peary  had  shown  the  same  spirit 
to  the  ever  faithful  Dr.  Dedrick  that  he  had  shown  to 
Verhoeff ,  to  Astrup,  and  to  others.  Although  Dedrick 
could  not  endure  Peary's  unfairness,  he  remained, 


516  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

against  instructions,  within  reach  for  just  such  an 
emergency  as  this  epidemic  presented.  He  offered  his 
services  when  the  epidemic  broke  out,  but  Peary  refused 
his  offer,  and  allowed  the  natives  to  die  rather  than 
permit  a  competent  medical  expert  to  attend  the 
afflicted. 

Near  the  same  point,  a  year  later,  Captain  Otto 
Sverdrup  wintered  with  his  ship.  His  mission  was  to 
explore  the  great  unknown  to  the  west.  This  unex- 
plored country  had  been  under  Mr.  Peary's  eye  for  ten 
years ;  but  instead  of  exploring  it,  his  time  was  spent  in 
an  easy  and  comparatively  luxurious  life  about  a 
comfortable  camp.  When  Sverdrup's  men  visited  the 
Peary  ship,  they  were  denied  common  brotherly  cour- 
tesy and  were  refused  the  hospitality  which  is  universally 
granted,  by  an  unwritten  law,  to  all  field  workers.  Mr. 
Peary  even  refused  to  send  him,  on  his  returning  ship, 
important  letters  and  papers  which  Sverdrup  desired 
taken  back.  He  also  refused  to  allow  Sverdrup  to  take 
native  guides  and  dogs — which  did  not  belong  to  Mr. 
Peary.  This  same  courtesy  was  later  denied  to  Cap- 
tain Bernier,  of  the  Canadian  Expedition. 

Thus  attempting  to  make  a  private  preserve  of  the 
unclaimed  North,  he  attempted  to  discredit  and  thwart 
every  other  explorer's  effort.  In  line  with  the  same 
policy,  every  member  of  every  Peary  expedition  has 
been  muzzled  with  a  contract  which  prevented  talking 
or  writing  after  the  expedition's  return — contracts  by 
which  Mr.  Peary  derived  the  sole  credit,  the  entire 
profit,  and  all  the  honor  of  the  results  of  the  men  who 
volunteered  their  services  and  risked  their  lives.  This 
same  spirit  was  shown  at  the  time  when,  at  87°  45",  he 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  CONTROVERSY  517 

turned  Captain  Bartlett  back,  because  he  (Peary),  to 
use  his  own  words,  "wanted  all  the  honors." 

In  profiting  by  his  long  quest  for  funds  for  legiti- 
mate exploration,  we  find  Peary  engaged  in  private 
enterprises  for  which  public  funds  were  used.  Much  of 
this  money  was,  in  my  judgment,  used  to  promote  a 
lucrative  fur  and  ivory  trade,  while  the  real  effort  of 
getting  to  the  Pole  was  delayed,  seemingly,  for  com- 
mercial gain.  I  believe  the  Pole  might  have  been 
reached  ten  years  earlier.  But  delay  was  profitable. 

After  being  thus  engaged  for  years  in  a  propa- 
ganda of  self -exploitation,  in  assailing  other  explorers 
whom  he  regarded  as  rivals,  in  committing  deeds  in  the 
North  unworthy  of  an  American  and  officer  of  the 
Navy,  Peary,  knowing  that  I  had  started  Poleward, 
knowing  that  relief  must  inevitably  be  required,  ulti- 
mately appropriated  my  supplies,  and  absolutely  pre- 
vented any  effort  to  reach  me,  which  even  the  natives 
themselves  might  have  made.  Peary  knew  he  was 
endangering  my  life.  He  knew  that  he  was  getting 
ivory  and  furs  in  return  for  supplies  belonging  to  me, 
and  which  I  should  need.  He  knew,  also,  that  it  would 
not  coincide  with  his  selfish  purposes  of  appropriating 
all  honor  and  profit  if  I  reached  the  Pole  and  should 
return  and  tell  the  world.  His  deliberate  act  was  in 
itself — whether  so  designed  or  not — an  effort  to  kill  a 
brother  explorer.  The  stains  of  at  least  a  dozen  other 
lives  are  on  this  man. 

The  property  which  Peary  took  from  Francke  and 
myself,  with  the  hand  of  a  buccaneer  and  the  heart  of  a 
hypocrite,  was  worth  thirty-five  thousand  dollars.  This 
was  done,  not  to  insure  expedition  needs,  but  to  satisfy 


518  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

a  hunger  for  commercial  gain,  and  to  inflict  a  cowardly, 
underhanded  injury  on  a  rival.  All  of  my  caches,  my 
camp  equipment,  my  food,  were  taken;  and  under  his 
own  handwriting  he  gave  the  orders  which  deprived  me 
of  all  relief  efforts  at  a  time  when  relief  was  of  vital 
importance.  Certainly  to  all  appearances  this  was  a 
deliberate,  preconceived  plan  to  kill  a  rival  worker  by 
starvation.  Here  we  find  an  American  naval  officer 
stooping  to  a  trick  for  which  he  would  be  hanged  in  a 
mining  camp. 

Many  members  of  his  expeditions,  some  rough  sea- 
men, speak  with  shuddering  of  his  actions  in  that  far- 
away North.  In  my  possession  are  affidavits,  volun- 
tarily made  and  given  to  me  by  members  of  Mr.  Peary's 
expeditions,  revealing  gross  actions,  which,  in  an  officer 
of  the  Navy,  call  for  investigation.  Mention  has  been 
made  of  certain  facts,  because,  only  by  knowing  these 
things,  can  people  understand  the  spirit  and  character 
of  the  man  and  the  unscrupulous  attacks  made  upon 
me,  and  understand,  also,  why,  out  of  a  sense  of  deli- 
cacy and  dislike  for  mudslinging,  I  remained  silent  so 
long.  It  is  only  because  the  public  has  been  misled  by 
a  sensational  press,  because  I  realize  I  have  suffered  by 
my  own  silence,  in  order  that  history  may  know  the  full 
truth  and  accord  a  just  verdict,  that  with  reluctance, 
with  a  sense  of  shuddering  distaste,  I  have  been  com- 
pelled to  present  these  unpleasant  pages  of  unwritten 
Arctic  history. 

When  Mr.  Peary  and  his  partisans  attacked  me 
they  hesitated  at  nothing  that  was  untrue,  cruel  and 
dishonorable — forgery  and  perjury  even  seemed  justi- 
fiable to  them  in  their  effort  to  discredit  me.  I  still 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  CONTROVERSY  519 

hesitate  to  speak  of  certain  unworthy,  unblushing  and 
utterly  cruel  acts  of  which  Mr.  Peary  is  guilty.  I 
would  have  preferred  to  remain  silent  about  the  actions 
of  which  I  have  told. 

Assuming  the  attitude  of  one  above  reproach,  Peary, 
upon  his  return,  assailed  me  as  a  dishonest  person  who 
tried  to  rob  him  of  honor.  Had  the  actual  and  full 
truths  been  told  at  the  time  about  Peary's  life  in  the 
North,  his  charges  would  have  rebounded  annihilatingly 
upon  himself.  For  certain  things  the  people  of  this 
country,  who  are  clean,  honest  and  fair,  will  not  stand. 
The  facts  told  about  Peary  in  the  affidavits  given  me 
make  his  charges  of  dishonor  and  dishonesty  against 
me  a  travesty,  indeed.  Yet,  at  a  time  when  1  might 
have  profited  by  revealing  phases  of  Mr.  Peary's  per- 
sonal character,  I  preferred  to  remain  silent.  Of  cer- 
tain things  men  do  not  care  to  speak.  Although  Mr. 
Peary  and  his  friends  endeavored  to  make  the  Polar 
controversy  a  personal  one,  I  regarded  Mr.  Peary's 
personal  actions  as  having  no  bearing  upon  his,  or  my, 
having  attained  the  Pole.  He  and  his  friends  forced  a 
personal  fight;  they  tried  to  injure  my  veracity,  my 
reputation  for  truth-telling,  my  personal  honor.  I  had 
hoped  against  hope  that  the  truth  would  resolve  itself 
without  any  necessity  of  my  revealing  elements  of  Mr. 
Peary's  character.  I  have  herein  »recited  pages  from  his 
past,  known  to  Arctic  explorers  but  not  to  the  general 
public,  so  that  his  attitude  toward  me  may  be  under- 
stood. Yet  all,  indeed,  has  not  been  told.  Although 
Mr.  Peary  did  not  scruple  to  lie  about  me,  I  still  hesitate 
to  tell  the  full  truth  about  him. 

In  the  white,  frozen  North  a  tragedy  was  enacted 


520  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

which  would  bring  tears  to  the  hearts  of  all  who  possess 
human  tenderness  and  kindness.  This  has  never  been 
written.  To  write  it  would  still  further  reveal  the  ruth- 
lessness,  the  selfishness,  the  cruelty  of  the  man  who  tried 
to  ruin  me.  Yet  here  I  prefer  the  charity  of  silence, 
where,  indeed,  charity  is  not  at  all  merited. 

The  knowledge  of  these  facts  tempered  the  shocks 
I  felt  when  the  Peary  campaign  of  defamation  was 
first  made  against  me.  I  told  myself  that  a  man  who 
had  done  these  things  would,  in  the  nature  of  things,  be 
branded  by  the  truth,  as  he  deserved. 

I  was  not  so  greatly  surprised  that  Peary  tried  to 
steal  my  honor.  I  knew  that  he  had  stolen  tangible 
things.  Yet  the  theft  of  food,  even  though  a  man's  life 
depends  upon  it,  is  not  so  awful  as  the  attempt  to  steal 
the  good  name  a  father  hopes  to  bequeath  his  children. 
Yet  Peary  has  attempted  to  do  this. 

He  has  attempted  to  blacken  me  in  the  eyes  of 
my  family;  but,  with  the  conscience  of  a  brute,  he  has 
deserted  two  of  his  own  children — left  them  to  starve 
and  freeze  in  the  cheerless  north.  They  are  there 
today  crying  for  food  and  a  father,  while  he  enjoys  a 
life  of  luxury  at  the  expense  of  the  American  tax- 
payers. This  statement  calls  for  an  investigation  by 
the  Secretary  of  the  Navy.  See  photograph  of  the 
deserted  child  of  the  Sultan  of  the  North,  facing  page 
493. 


THE  MT.  McKINLEY  BRIBERY 

THE  BRIBED,  FAKED  AND  FORGED  NEWS  ITEMS THE  PRO- 
PEARY  MONEY  POWERS  ENCOURAGE  PERJURY MT. 

M'KINLEY  HONESTLY  CLIMBED — HOW,  FOR  PEARY, 
A  SIMILAR  PEAK  WAS  FAKED 

XXXIV 

How  A  MAN'S  SOUL  WAS  MARKETED, 

After  Mr.  Peary  had  done  his  utmost  to  try  to 
disprove  my  Polar  attainment;  after  the  chain  of  news- 
papers which,  for  him,  in  conjunction  with  the  New 
York  Times,  had  printed  the  same  egregious  lies  on  the 
same  days,  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific;  after  they 
had  expended  all  possible  ammunition,  the  damages 
inflicted  were  still  insufficient.  My  narrative,  as  pub- 
lished in  the  New  York  Herald,  was  still  more  generally 
credited  than  Mr.  Peary's.  To  gain  his  end,  something 
else  had  to  be  done.  Something  else  was  done.  The 
darkest  page  of  defamation  in  the  world's  history  of 
exploration  was  now  written  by  the  hands  of  bribers 
and  perjurers. 

The  public  suddenly  turned  from  the  newspaper- 
inculcated  idea  of  "proof"  in  figures  to  a  more  sane 
examination  of  personal  veracity.  To  destroy  my 
reputation  for  truth  in  the  public  mind  was  the  next 


522  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

unscrupulous  effort  decided  upon.  The  selfish  and 
self-evident  press  campaign,  obviously  managed  by  the 
Peary  cabal,  to  that  end  had  given  unsatisfactory  re- 
sults. Some  vital  blow  must  be  delivered  by  fair  means 
or  otherwise. 

The  climb  of  Mt.  McKinley  was  now  challenged. 

I  had  made  a  first  ascent  of  the  great  mid- Alaskan 
peak  in  1906.  The  record  of  that  conquest  was  pub- 
lished during  my  absence  in  the  North,  under  the  title, 
"To  the  Top  of  the  Continent."  The  book,  being 
printed  at  a  time  when  I  was  unable  to  see  the  proofs, 
contained  some  mistakes ;  but  in  it  was  all  the  data  that 
could  be  presented  for  such  an  undertaking. 

The  Board  of  Aldermen  of  the  City  of  New  York 
decided  to  honor  me  by  offering  the  keys  and  the  free- 
dom of  the  metropolis  on  October  15.  This  was  to  be 
an  important  event.  The  pro-Peary  conspiracy  aiming 
to  deliver  striking  blows  through  the  press,  their  propa- 
ganda was  so  planned  that  the  bribed,  faked  and  forged 
news  items  were  issued  on  days  which  gave  them 
dramatic  and  psychologic  climaxes.  Two  days  before 
the  New  York  demonstration  in  my  favor,  the  preten- 
tious full-page  broadside  of  distorted  Eskimo  informa- 
tion was  issued.  This  fell  flat ;  for  it  was  instantly  seen 
to  be  a  pretentious  rearrangement  of  old  charges.  But 
it  was  so  played  up  as  to  fill  columns  of  newspaper 
space  and  impress  readers  by  its  magnitude.  This  was 
followed  by  the  Barrill  affidavit,  similarly  played  up  so 
as  k)  fill  a  full  newspaper  page,  which  I  shall  analyze 
later.  All  this  was  done  to  draw  a  black  cloud 
over  the  day  of  honor  in  New  York,  the  15th  day  of 
October. 


THE  MT.  McKINLEY  BRIBERY  523 

Since  the  published  affidavit  of  my  old  associate, 
Barrill,  was  a  document  which  proved  him  a  self- 
confessed  liar;  since  the  affidavit  carried  with  it  the 
earmarks  of  pro-Peary  bribery  and  perjury,  I  reasoned 
again  that  fair-minded  people  would  in  time  see  through 
this  moneyed  campaign  of  dishonor.  In  all  history  it 
has  been  shown  that  he  who  seeks  to  besmear  others 
usually  leaves  the  greatest  amount  of  mud  on  himself. 
But  again  I  had  not  counted  on  the  unfairness  of  the 
press. 

The  only  reason  given  that  I  should  have  faked  the 
climb  of  Mt.  McKinley  is  that,  in  some  vague  way,  I 
was  to  profit  mightily  by  a  successful  report.  The 
expedition  was  to  have  been  financed  by  a  rich  Phila- 
delphia sportsman.  He  did  advance  the  greater  por- 
tion of  the  sum  required.  We  were  to  prepare  a  game 
trail  for  him.  Something  interfered,  he  relinquished  his 
trip,  and  did  not  send  the  balance  of  money  promised. 

The  result  was  that  many  checks  I  had  given  out 
went  to  protest.  Harper  &  Brothers  had  agreed,  before 
starting,  to  pay  me  $1,500  for  an  account  of  the  expedi- 
tion, whether  successful  or  not.  On  my  return  this  was 
paid,  and  went  to  meet  outstanding  debts — debts  to  pay 
which  I  embarrassed  myself.  Instead  of  "profits"  from 
this  alleged  "fake,"  I  suffered  a  loss  of  several  thousand 
dollars. 

As  is  quite  usual  in  all  exploring  expeditions,  some 
of  the  members  of  my  Mt.  McKinley  expedition,  who 
did  not  share  in  the  final  success,  were  disgruntled. 
Chief  among  these  was  Herschell  Parker.  Owing  to 
ill-health  and  inexperience,  Parker  had  proved  himself 
inefficient  in  Alaskan  work.  Climbing  a  little  peak 


524  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

forty  miles  from  the  great  mountain,  when  he  was  with 
me,  he  had  pronounced  Mt.  McKinley  unclimbable. 
Climbing  a  similar  hill,  four  years  later,  he  stooped  to 
the  humbug  of  offering  a  photograph  of  it  as  a  parallel 
to  my  picture  of  the  top  of  Mt.  McKinley.  This  man 
was  so  ill-fitted  for  such  work  that  two  men  were  re- 
quired to  help  him  mount  a  horse.  But  I  insisted  that 
we  continue  at  least  to  the  base  of  the  mountain.  At 
the  first  large  glacier,  Parker  and  his  companion, 
Belmore  Brown,  balked,  halting  in  front  of  an  insignifi- 
cant ice-wall.  The  ascent  of  Mt.  McKinley,  still  thirty- 
five  miles  off,  they  said,  was  impossible.  Parker  re- 
turned, and  in  a  trail  of  four  thousand  miles  to  New 
York  told  every  press  representative  how  impossible  was 
the  ascent  of  Mt.  McKinley.  By  the  time  Parker 
reached  New  York  a  cable  went  through  that  the  thing 
was  done.  At  a  point  four  thousand  miles  from  the 
scene  of  action,  he  again  cried,  "Impossible!"  When  I 
returned  to  New  York,  however,  a  month  later,  and 
Parker  learned  the  details,  he  publicly  and  privately 
credited  my  ascent  of  Mt.  McKinley.  Nothing  further 
was  said  to  doubt  the  climb  until  two  years  later,  when 
he  lined  up  with  the  Peary  interests. 

Using  Parker  as  a  tool,  Peary's  Arctic  Club, 
through  him,  first  forced  the  side-issue  of  Mt.  McKin- 
ley. With  the  Barrill  affidavit,  made  later,  were 
printed  other  affidavits  by  Barrill's  friends,  who  had  not 
been  within  fifty  miles  of  the  mountain  when  it  was 
climbed.  This  act,  to  me,  was  a  bitter  climax  of  injus- 
tice. But  I  have  since  learned  that  Printz  got  $500  of 
pro-Peary  money;  that  both  Miller  and  Beecher  were 
promised  large  amounts,  but  were  cheated  at  the  "show- 


THE  MT.  McKINLEY  BRIBERY  525 

down."  Printz  afterwards  wrote  that  he  would  make 
an  affidavit  for  me  for  $300,  and  at  Missoula  he  made 
an  affidavit  in  which  he  attempted  to  defend  me.*  This 
he  offered  to  sell  to  Roscoe  Mitchell  for  $1,000. 

While  easy  pro-Peary  money  was  passing  in  the 
West,  Parker  came  forward  with  his  old  grudge.  His 
chief  contention  was  that,  because  he  had  taken  home 
with  him  in  deserting  the  object  of  the  expedition  a 
hypsometer,  I  could  not  have  measured  the  high  alti- 
tudes claimed.  The  altitude  had  been  measured  by 
triangulation  by  the  hydrographer  of  the  expedition, 
but  I  had  other  methods  of  measuring  the  ascent. 

I  had  two  aneroid  barometers,  specially  marked  for 
very  high  climbing,  thermometers,  and  all  the  usual 
Alpine  instruments.  The  hypsometer  was  not  at  that 
time  an  important  instrument.  Parker  also  showed 
unfair  methods  by  allowing  the  press  repeatedly  to  print 
that  he  had  been  the  leader  and  the  organizer  of  the 
expedition.  This  he  knew  to  be  false.  I  had  organized 
two  expeditions  to  explore  Mt.  McKinley,  at  a  cost  of 
$28,000.  Of  this  Parker  had  furnished  $2,500.  Parker 
took  no  part  in  the  organization  of  the  last  expedition, 
had  given  no  advice  to  help  supply  an  adequate  equip- 
ment, and  in  the  field  his  presence  was  a  daily  handicap 
to  the  progress  of  the  expedition.  Heretofore,  this  was 


*Letter  from  Barrill's  associate: 

MISSOULA,  MONT.,  Oct.  12,  1909. 

Friend  Cook — I  am  sorry  that  I  can't  come  at  present.     But  will  come 
and  see  you  in  about  fifteen  days  if  you  will  send  me  Three  Hundred  and 
Fifty   ($350.00),  and  I  will  say  that  the  report  in  the  papers   (that  Dr. 
Cook  did  not  ascend  Mt.  McKinley),  from  what  I  have,  is  not  true. 
Hoping  to  see  you  soon. 

Your  friend, 

(Signed)     FRED  PRINTZ. 


526  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

never  indicated.  But  when  he  allows  himself  to  be 
quoted  as  the  leader  of  an  expedition  upon  which  he 
attempts  to  throw  discredit,  then  it  is  right  that  all  the 
facts  be  known. 

In  the  press  reports,  when  Parker  was  first  heard 
from,  came  the  news  that  on  the  Pacific  coast,  at 
Tacoma,  a  lawyer  by  the  name  of  J.  M.  Ashton  was 
retained  by  someone.  To  the  press  Ashton  said  he  was 
engaged  "to  look  into  the  McKinley  business,"  but  he 
did  not  know  by  whom — -whether  by  Cook  or  Peary. 
He  was  "engaged"  in  a  business  too  questionable  to  tell 
who  furnished  the  money. 

In  the  final  ascent  of  Mt.  McKinley  there  was  with 
me  Edward  Barrill,  the  affidavit-maker.  He  was  a 
good-natured  and  hard-working  packer,  who  had 
proved  himself  a  most  able  climber.  Together  we 
ascended  the  mountain  in  September,  1906.  To  this 
time  (1909)  there  was  not  the  slightest  doubt  about  the 
footprints  on  the  top  of  the  great  mountain.  Barrill 
had  told  everybody  that  he  knew,  and  all  who  would 
listen  to  him,  that  the  mountain  was  climbed.  He  went 
from  house  to  house  boastfully,  with  my  book  under  his 
arm,  telling  and  retelling  the  story  of  the  ascent  of  Mt. 
McKinley.  That  anyone  should  now  believe  the  affi- 
davit, secured  and  printed  for  Peary,  did  not  to  me 
seem  reasonable. 

Parker,  filling  the  position  of  betrayer  and  traitor 
to  one  who  had  saved  his  life  many  times,  had  decided, 
as  the  Polar  controversy  opened,  to  direct  the  Mt. 
McKinley  side-issue  of  the  pro-Peary  effort. 

The  first  news  of  bribery  in  the  matter  came  from 
Darby,  Montana.  This  was  Ban-ill's  home  town.  A 


THE  MT.  McKINLEY  BRIBERY  527 

Peary  man  from  Chicago  was  there.  He  frankly  said 
that  he  would  pay  Barrill  $1,000  to  offer  news  that 
would  discredit  the  climb  of  Mt.  McKinley.  Other 
news  of  the  dishonest  pro-Peary  movement  induced  me 
to  send  Roscoe  Mitchell,  of  the  New  York  Herald,  to 
the  working  ground  of  the  bribers.  Mitchell  was 
working  under  the  direction  of  my  attorneys,  H.  Well- 
ington Wack,  of  New  York,  Colonel  Marshal,  of 
Missoula,  and  General  Weed,  of  Helena,  Montana. 

Mitchell  secured  testimony  and  evidence  regarding 
the  buying  of  Barrill,  but  was  unable  to  put  the  con- 
spirators in  jail.  At  Hamilton,  Montana,  there  had 
appeared  a  man  with  $5,000  to  pass  to  Barrill.  Bar- 
rill's  first  reply  was  that  he  had  climbed  the  mountain; 
that  Dr.  Cook  had  climbed  the  mountain;  that  to  take 
that  $5,000,  in  his  own  words,  he  "would  have  to  sell  his 
own  soul."  Barrill's  business  partner,  Bridgeford, 
was  present.  He  later  made  an  affidavit  for  Mr. 
Mitchell  covering  this  part  of  the  pro-Peary  perjury 
effort. 

A  little  later,  however,  Barrill  said  to  his  partner 
he  "might  as  well  see  what  was  in  it."  Five  thousand 
dollars  to  Barrill  meant  more  than  five  million  dollars  to 
Mr.  Peary  or  his  friends.  To  Barrill,  ignorant,  poor, 
good-natured,  but  weak,  it  was  an  irresistible 
temptation. 

Barrill  now  went  to  Seattle.  He  visited  the  office 
of  the  Seattle  Times.  In  the  presence  of  the  editor, 
Mr.  Joe  Blethen,  he  dickered  for  the  sale  of  an  affidavit 
to  discredit  me.  He  knew  such  an  affidavit  had  news 
value.  Indefinite  offers  ranging  from  $5,000  to  $10,000 
were  made.  Not  getting  a  lump  sum  off-hand,  Barrill, 


528  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

dissatisfied,  then  went  over  to  Tacoma,  to  the  mysterious 
Mr.  Ashton.  That  all  this  was  done,  was  told  me  on 
my  trip  west  shortly  afterward,  by  Mr.  Blethen  himself. 

After  visiting  Ashton,  Barrill  was  seen  in  a  bank 
in  Tacoma.  Barrill  had  said  to  his  partner  that  to  make 
an  affidavit  denying  my  climb  would  be  "selling  his 
soul."  Barrill,  ill  at  ease,  reluctant,  appeared.  It  is  a 
terrible  thing  to  lure  a  weak  man  to  dishonor;  it  is  still 
more  tragic  and  awful  when  that  man  is  bought  so  his 
lie  may  hurt  another.  The  time  for  the  parting  of  his 
soul  had  arrived  in  the  bank.  With  the  sadness  of  a 
funeral  mourner  Barrill  was  pushed  along.  The  talk  was 
in  a  muffled  undertone.  But  it  all  happened.  In  the  pres- 
ence of  a  witness,  whose  evidence  I  am  ready  to  produce, 
$1,500  was  passed  to  him.  This  money  was  paid  in 
large  bills,  and  placed  in  Ban-ill's  money-belt.  There 
were  other  considerations,  and  I  know  where  some  of 
this  money  was  spent.  His  soul  was  marketed  at  last. 
The  infamous  affidavit  was  then  prepared. 

This  affidavit  was  printed  first  in  the  New  York 
Globe.  The  Globe  is  partly  owned  and  entirely  con- 
trolled by  General  Thomas  H.  Hubbard,  the  President 
of  the  Peary  Club.  With  General  Hubbard,  Mr.  Peary 
had  consulted  at  Bar  Harbor  immediately  after  his 
return  from  Sydney.  Together  they  had  outlined  their 
campaign.  General  Hubbard  is  a  multi-millionaire. 
A  tremendous  amount  of  money  was  spent  in  the  Peary 
campaign.  In  the  Mt.  McKinley  affidavit  of  Barrill 
we  can  trace  bribery,  a  conspiracy,  and  black  dishonor, 
right  up  to  the  door  of  R.  E.  Peary. 

If  Peary  is  not  the  most  unscrupulous  self-seeker 
in  the  history  of  exploration,  caught  in  underhand,  sur- 


THE  MT.  McKINLEY  BRIBERY  529 

reptitious  acts  too  cowardly  to  be  credited  to  a  thief, 
caught  in  the  act  of  bartering  for  men's  souls  and  honor 
in  as  ruthless  a  way  as  he  high-handedly  took  others' 
property  in  the  North;  if  he,  drawing  an  unearned 
salary  from  the  American  Navy,  has  not  brindled  his 
soul  with  stripes  that  fit  his  body  for  jail,  let  him  come 
forward  and  reply.  If  Peary  is  not  the  most  con- 
scienceless of  self -exploiters  in  all  history,  caught  in  the 
act  of  stealing  honor  by  forcing  dishonor,  let  him  come 
forward  and  explain  the  Mt.  McKinley  perjury. 

Now  let  us  examine  the  others  who  were  lined  up 
in  this  desperate  black  hand  movement.  In  New 
York  there  is  a  club,  at  first  organized  to  bring  explor- 
ers together  and  to  encourage  original  research.  It 
bore  the  name  of  Explorers'  Club ;  but,  as  is  so  often  the 
case  with  clubs  that  monopolize  a  pretentious  name,  the 
membership  degenerated.  It  is  now  merely  an  associa- 
tion of  museum  collectors.  Among  real  explorers, 
this  club  to-day  is  jocularly  known  as  the  "Worm 
Diggers'  Union."  In  1909  Mr.  Peary  was  president. 
His  press  agent,  Bridgman,  was  the  moving  spirit,  and 
one  of  Colonel  Mann's  muck-rakers  was  secretary.  Of 
course,  such  a  society,  committed  to  Peary,  had  no  use 
for  Dr.  Cook. 

In  a  spirit  of  helping  along  the  pro-Peary  con- 
spiracy, and  after  the  Barrill  affidavit  was  secured,  the 
Explorers'  Club  took  upon  itself  the  superj-ogatory 
duty  of  appointing  a  committee  to  pass  on  my  ascent  of 
Mt.  McKinley.  There  was  but  one  real  explorer  on 
this  committee.  The  others  were  kitchen  geographers, 
whose  honor  and  fairness  had  been  bartered  to  the  Peary 
interests  before  the  investigation  began.  Without  a 


530  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

line  of  data  before  them,  they  decided,  with  glee  and 
gusto,  that  Mt.  McKinley  had  not  been  climbed.  This 
was  what  one  would  expect  from  such  an  honor-blind 
group  of  meddlers.  But  Mr.  Peary's  press  worker, 
Bridgman,  who  himself  had  engineered  the  investiga- 
tion, used  this  seeming  verdict  of  experts  to  Mr.  Peary's 
advantage.* 

Still  all  these  combined  underhanded  efforts  failed 
to  reach  vital  spots  and  to  turn  the  entire  public  Mr. 
Peary's  way.  Something  more  must  still  be  done, 
Peary's  press  agent  offered  $3,000,  and  the  cowardly 
Ashtqn,  of  Tacoma,  offered  another  $3,000,  to  send  an 
expedition  to  Alaska,  to  further  the  pro-Peary  effort  to 
down  a  rival.  The  traitor,  Parker,  responded.  He  was 
joined  by  the  other  quitter,  Belmore  Brown,  who  has 
conveniently  forgotten  to  return  borrowed  money  to  me. 
This  Peary-Parker-Brown  combination  went  to  Alaska 
in  1910,  engaged  in  mining  pursuits  and  hunting  adven- 
tures. They  returned  with  the  expected  and  framed  re- 
port that  Mt.  McKinley  had  not  been  climbed,  and  that 
they  had  climbed  a  snow-hill,  had  photographed  it,  and 
that  the  photograph  was  similar  to  mine  of  the  topmost 
peak  of  Mt.  McKinley.  Mt.  McKinley  has  a  base  twenty- 
five  miles  wide;  it  has  upon  the  various  slopes  of  its 
giant  uplift  hundreds  of  peaks,  all  glacial,  polished,  and 
of  a  similar  contour.  No  one  peak  towers  gigantically 
above  the  others.  On  the  top  are  many  peaks,  no  par- 

*While  this  book  was  going  through  the  press,  several  chapters  of  the 
proof-sheets,  stolen  from  the  printers,  Messrs.  Lent  &  Graff,  were  found 
on  the  table  of  the  Explorers'  Club  on  June  27,  1911.  It  is  important  to 
note  that  this  pro-Peary  repository  of  bribed,  faked  and  forged  writings, 
which  were  issued  to  defame  me,  is  also  the  den  for  stolen  goods.  Who  are 
the  thieves  who  congregate  there  to  deposit  their  booty?  Why  the  theft 
of  a  part  of  my  book?  What  humbug  has  this  club  and  its  shameless 
president  next  to  offer? 


THE  MT.  McKINLEY  BRIBERY  531 

ticular  one  of  which  can  with  any  accuracy  of  inches  be 
decided  arbitrarily  as  the  very  highest.  The  top  of  a 
mountain  does  not  converge  to  a  pin-point  apex.  One 
looks  out,  not  into  immediate  space  on  all  sides,  but 
over  an  area,  as  I  have  said,  of  many  peaks.  My 
photograph  of  the  peak,  which  loomed  highest  among 
the  others  on  the  top,  possesses  a  profile  not  unsual 
among  ice-cut  rocks.  The  Peary-Parker-Brown  seek- 
ers tried  hard  to  duplicate  this  photograph,  so  as  to 
show  I  had  faked  my  picture.  The  thing  might  have 
been  done  easily  in  the  Canadian  Rockies.  It  could  be 
done  in  a  dozen  more  accessible  places  in  Alaska;  but, 
without  real  work,  it  could  be  only  crudely  done  near 
Mt.  McKinley.  The  photograph  which  Peary's  friends 
offered  to  discredit  the  first  ascent  is  one  of  a  double 
peak,  part  of  which  vaguely  suggests  but  a  poor  outline 
of  Mt.  McKinley,  and  in  which  a  rock  has  been  faked. 
Who  is  responsible  for  this  humbug?  Where  is  the 
negative?  The  photograph  bears  no  actual  semblance 
to  my  picture  of  the  top  of  Mt.  McKinley  whatever. 
But  why  was  the  negative  faked?  Parker  excuses  the 
evident  unfairness  of  the  dissimilar  photograph  by  say- 
ing that  he  could  not  get  the  same  position  as  I  must 
have  had.  But  is  laziness  or  haste  an  excuse  when  a 
man's  honor  is  assailed.t 


t  Letter  from  an  onlooker  when  Mt.  McKinley  was  climbed: 
To  Dr.  Cook's  Friends: 

Professor  Parker  says  "regretfully"  that  Dr.  Cook's  evidence  as  to  the 
ascent  of  Mt.  McKinley  was  unconvincing. 

I  was  located  in  the  foothills  of  Mt.  McKinley,  and  had  been  for 
about  a  year,  when  Dr.  Cook,  Professor  H.  C.  Parker,  Mr.  Porter,  the 
topographer  of  the  party,  and  Mr.  Miller,  Fred  Printz  and  the  rest  of  the 
party,  landed  at  the  head-waters  of  the  Yentna  River,  in  the  foothills  of 
Mt.  McKinley. 

I  met  Professor  Parker  and  the  rest  of  the  party,  and  saw  a  great 


532  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Let  us  follow  the  Peary  high-handed  humbugs 
further.  To  the  southeast  of  Mt.  McKinley  is  a  huge 
mountain,  which  I  named  Mt.  Disston  in  1905.  This 
peak  was  robbed  of  its  name,  and  over  it  Parker  wrote 
Mt.  Huntington.  To  the  northeast  of  Mt.  McKinley 
is  another  peak,  charted  on  my  maps,  to  which  Peary 
gave  the  name  of  the  president  of  the  Peary  Arctic 
Trust.  To  this  peak  was  given  the  same  name,  by  the 
same  methods  of  stealing  the  credit  of  other  explorers, 
as  that  adopted  by  Peary  when,  in  response  to  $25,000 
of  easy  money,  he  wrote  the  same  name,  "Thomas  Hub- 
bard,"  over  Sverdrup's  northern  point  of  Heiberg 


deal  of  them  while  they  were  up  there,  as  I  had  three  mining  camps  in 
the  foothills  from  which  they  made  their  try  for  the  top  of  the  mountain. 
I  let  Dr.  Cook  have  one  of  my  Indian  hunters,  who  knew  every  foot  of 
the  country  around  there,  for  a  guide.  Dr.  Cook  also  had  some  of  his 
caches  in  my  camps,  leaving  supplies  which  he  did  not  take  along  with 
his  pack-trains.  Some  of  Dr.  Cook's  party  were  in  our  camps  nearly  every 
day  or  so,  and  consequently  I  became  very  well  posted  in  regard  to  Dr. 
Cook's  affairs,  and  very  well  acquainted  with  him.  Dr.  Parker  should  be 
the  last  one  to  say  anything  about  mountain-climbing  or  anything  else 
connected  with  the  expedition,  or  anything  where  it  takes  a  man  and  pluck 
to  accomplish  results — good  results;  as  he  showed  himself  to  be  the  rankest 
kind  of  a  tenderfoot  while  in  the  foothills  of  Mt.  McKinley,  and  was  the 
laughing  stock  of  the  country.  Mt.  McKinley  and  the  country  around 
there  was  too  rough  for  him.  He  got  "cold  feet,"  and  started  back  for 
the  States,  before  he  had  even  seen  much  of  the  country  around  there. 

Looking  over  my  memoranda,  I  find  that  Dr.  Cook  had  given  up  his 
attempt  to  climb  Mt.  McKinley  for  the  time  being,  and  had  sent  Printz 
and  Miller  on  a  hunting  expedition,  and  the  rest  of  the  party  was  scattered 
out  to  hunt  up  something  new. 

At  that  time  I  came  into  Youngstown,  and  the  boys  were  getting  ready 
to  strike  out  on  their  different  routes,  and  Dr.  Cook  was  going  down  to 
Tyonic,  in  Cook's  Inlet,  with  his  launch,  to  meet  a  friend,  Mr.  Disston, 
who  expected  to  go  on  a  hunting  trip  with  him.  The  friend  did  not 
arrive,  so  Dr.  Cook  returned  to  the  head-waters  of  the  Yentna  River,  to 
Youngstown,  arriving  there  on  Monday,  August  27.  On  Sunday,  August 
28,  he  started  down  to  the  Sushitna  River.  I  went  down  with  him  as  far 
as  the  Sushitna  Station,  and  he  told  me  he  was  going  to  run  up  the  river 
and  strike  Fish  Creek,  which  ran  up  on  another  side  of  Mt.  McKinley,  and 
see  what  the  chances  were  to  make  the  top  of  the  continent  from  that  side. 
He  made  it.  I  was  one  of  the  last  to  see  him  start  on  the  ascent,  and  one 
of  the  first  to  see  him  when  he  returned  after  he  had  made  the  ascent. 

Dr.  Cook  proved  to  be  a  man  in  every  respect,  as  unselfish  as  he  was 


THE  MT.  McKINLEY  BRIBERY  533 

Land.  Can  it  be  doubted  that  the  Peary-Parker- 
Brown  propaganda  of  hypocrisy  and  dishonor  in  Alaska 
is  guided  by  no  other  spirit  than  that  of  Mr.  Peary? 

Many  persons  say:  "We  will  credit  Dr.  Cook's 
attainment  of  the  Pole  if  this  Mt.  McKinley  matter  is 
cleared  up."  I  have  heard  this  often.  I  have  offered 
in  my  book  proofs  of  the  climb — the  same  proofs  any 

courageous,  always  giving  the  other  fellow  a  thought  before  thinking  of 
himself. 

Upon  his  arrival  from  the  ascent  of  the  mountain,  although  tired  and 
worn  and  in  a  bad  physical  condition  himself,  he  gave  his  unlimited  atten- 
tion to  a  party  of  prospectors  who  had  been  picked  up  from  a  wreck  in 
the  river,  and  brought  into  camp  in  an  almost  dying  condition  just  before 
his  arrival.  He  spent  hours  working  over  these  men,  and  did  not  give 
himself  a  thought  until  they  were  properly  cared  for. 

Evidence?  No  man  who  has  known  Dr.  Cook,  been  with  him,  worked 
with  him,  and  learned  by  personal  experience  of  his  courage,  energy  and 
perseverance,  would  ask  for  evidence  beyond  his  word. 

Dr.  Cook  is  one  of  the  most  daring  men,  and  can  stand  more  hardships 
than  any  man  I  have  ever  met,  and  I  believe  I  have  met  some  of  the  most 
able  men  of  the  world  when  it  comes  to  roughing  it  over  the  trails  in 
Alaska  and  the  North. 

Dr.  Cook  climbed  Mt.  McKinley.  Of  course  there  are  always  skep- 
tics— men  who  have  a  wishbone  instead  of  a  backbone,  and  who,  when 
wishing  has  brought  to  them  no  good  results,  their  last  effort  is  pushed 
forth  in  criticism  of  the  things  which  have  been  constructed  or  accomplished 
by  men,  their  superiors. 

If  Professor  Parker  wants  evidence  to  convince  him,  I  think  he  can 
find  it,  provided  he  will  put  himself  to  as  much  trouble  in  looking  for 
evidence  as  he  has  in  criticising  such  evidence  as  he  has  obtained. 
Respectfully  yours, 

J.  A.  MACDONALD. 

VONTRIGGER,  CALIFORNIA. 

Author's  Note. — It  is  a  curious  fact  that  most  men  who  have  assailed 
me  are  themselves  sailing  under  false  colors.  Herschell  Parker  was  an 
assistant  professor  and  instructor  in  the  Department  of  Physics  in  Columbia 
University.  This  gave  him  the  advantage  of  using  the  title,  "Professor," 
but,  like  many  others,  his  university  association  was  mostly  for  the  prestige 
it  gave  him.  His  professorship  assumption  was,  therefore,  a  deception. 
Instead  of  devoting  himself  conscientiously  to  university  interests,  he  was, 
like  Peary,  engaged  in  private  enterprises — such  as  the  Parker-Clark  light, 
and  other  ventures — and  employed  substitute  instructors  to  do  the  work 
for  which  he  drew  a  salary,  and  for  which  he  claimed  the  honor  and  the 
prestige.  A  man  who  thus  sails  falsely  under  the  banner  of  a  professor- 
ship is  just  the  man  to  try  to  steal  the  honor  of  other  men.  Here  is  a 
make-believe  professor  who  is  not  a  professor ;  whose  dwarfed  conscience  is 
eased  by  drippings  from  the  Arctic  Trust;  who  has  stooped  to  a  photo- 
graphic humbug.  He  is  a  fitting  exponent  of  the  bribing  pro-Peary 
propaganda. 


534  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

mountain-climber  offers.  To  discredit  these,  my  ene- 
mies stooped  to  bribery.  I  have  in  my  possession,  and 
have  stated  here,  proofs  of  this.  Such  proofs  are  even 
more  tangible  than  the  climbing  of  a  far-away  moun- 
tain. Is  any  other  clarifier  or  any  other  evidence 
required  to  prove  the  pro-Peary  frauds? 

THE  PEARY-PARKER-BROWN  HUMBUG  UP  TO  DATE 

This  chapter  is  best  closed  by  an  analysis  of  the  second  effort  of  Parker 
and  Brown.  It  will  be  remembered  that  in  their  first  venture  as  hirelings  of  the 
Peary  propaganda,  they  balked  at  the  north-east  ridge,  without  making  a  serious 
attempt.  This  ridge — (the  ridge  upon  which  I  had  climbed  to  the  top  of  Mt. 
McKinley)  was  pronounced  impossible  and  therefore  my  claim  in  their  judg- 
ment was  false,  for  such  a  statement  $3,000.00  had  been  paid.  During  the  spring 
of  1912,  again  with  $5,000  of  Pro-Peary  money  to  discredit  me — The  same  hire- 
lings went  through  the  range,  attacked  the  same  ridge  from  the  west  and  by  the 
really  able  efforts  of  their  guide,  La  Voy,  a  point  near  the  top  was  reached.  The 
Associated  Press  report  of  this  effort  said  that  the  principal  result  of  the  expedi- 
tion was  to  show  that  the  north-east  ridge  (the  ridge  which  I  had  climbed),  was 
climbable.  The  very  men  sent  out  and  paid,  therefore,  by  my  enemies  to  dis- 
prove my  work  have  proven,  against  their  will,  my  first  ascent  of  Mt.  McKinley. 
t  Two  other  exploring  parties  were  about  the  slopes  of  Mt.  McKinley  during 
the  time  of  the  Peary-Parker  defamers.  The  first,  a  group  of  (hardy  Alaskan 
pioneers,  whose  report  is  written  in  the  Overland  Magazine  for  February,  1913, 
by  Ralph  H.  Cairns — after  an  unbiased  study  of  reports  both  for  and  against, 
Cairns  credits  my  first  ascent.  The  well  known  Engineer  R.  C.  Bates,  who  as  a 
U.  S.  revenue  inspector  of  mines  and  an  explorer  and  mountain  climber,  did  much 
pioneer  work  about  Mt.  McKinley.  He  also  goes  on  record  in  the  Los  Angeles 
Tribune  of  February  13th,  1913,  as  saying:  "Dr.  Cook  really  succeeded  in  ascend- 
ing the  north-east  ridge  of  Mt.  McKinley  as  claimed  in  1906."  Bates  confirms 
the  charge  of  $5,000  being  paid  the  Parker-Brown  expedition  to  refute  my  1906 
ascent,  and  says:  "In  1906  Dr.  Cook  claimed  he  climbed  Mt.  McKinley  by  the 
north-east  ridge.  In  the  account  of  the  1910  expedition,  Parker  claimed  that 
'the  north-east  ridge,  the  one  used  by  Dr.  Cook,  was  absolutely  unsurmoun table*. 
I,  with  a  party  of  two,  explored  the  mountain  in  1911  and  selected  the  north-east 
ridge  as  the  only  feasible  route  to  the  top.  I  ascended  to  11,000  feet,  according 
to  barometric  measure.  I  told  of  the  exploit  to  members  of  the  Parker  party, 
who  took  the  same  course  in  1912.  Mr.  Parker  now  contradicts  his  former  state- 
ment by  saying,  'The  north-east  ridge  is  the  only  feasible  ridge,  and  whoever 
goes  up  will  follow  in  my  footsteps.' "  It  is  important  to  note  that  Dr.  Cook's 
previous  footsteps  were  eliminated,  $5,000  had  been  paid  for  that  very  purpose. 
In  a  personal  interview  Mr.  Bates  made  the  very  grave  change  that  one 
of  the  leaders  of  the  very  expedition  sent  out  to  discredit  me,  had  offered  him 
a  bribe  to  swear  falsely  to  certain  assessment  work  on  claims  which  had  not  been 
done.  The  Peary-Parker-Brown  movement  is  therefore  from  many  sources  a 
proven  propaganda  of  bribery,  conspiracy  and  perjury.  That  such  men  can  escape 
the  doom  of  prison  cells  is  a  parody  upon  human  decency,  and  yet  such  are  the 
men  who  are  responsible  for  the  distrust  which  has  been  thrown  on  my  work. 


THE  DUNKLE-LOOSE  FORGERY 

ITS  PRO-PEARY  MAKING 

XXXV 

THE  LAST  PERJURED  DEFAMATION 

With  the  bitterness  of  the  money-bought  document 
to  shatter  my  veracity  regarding  the  ascent  of  Mt. 
McKinley  ever  before  me,  I  canceled  in  November  all 
my  lecture  engagements.  Mr.  William  M.  Grey,  then 
managing  my  tour,  broke  contracts  covering  over 
$140,000.  But,  for  the  time  being,  these  could  not  be 
filled.  I  was  nearing  a  stage  of  mental  and  physical 
exhaustion,  and  required  rest.  Seeking  a  quiet  retreat, 
my  wife  and  I  left  the  Waldorf-Astoria  and  secured 
quarters  at  the  Gramatan  Inn,  in  Bronxville,  N.  Y. 
Here  was  prepared  my  report  and  data  to  be  sent  to 
Copenhagen. 

At  this  time,  as  if  again  destined  by  fate,  innocently 
I  made  my  greatest  error,  opened  myself  to  what  be- 
came the  most  serious  and  damaging  charge  against  my 
good  faith,  and  the  misstated  account  of  which,  pub- 
lished later,  was  used  by  my  enemies  in  their  efforts 
.o  brand  me  as  a  conscious  faker  and  deliberate  fraud. 

When  I  now  think  of  the  incidents  leading  up  to 
the  acquaintance  of  Dunkle  and  Loose,  it  does  seem 
that  I  had  lost  all  sense  of  balance,  and  that  my  brain 


536  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

was  befogged.  Shortly  before  I  had  started  West, 
Dunkle  was  brought  to  me  by  Mr.  Bradley  on  the  pre- 
text of  wanting  to  talk  life  insurance. 

During  my  lecture  tour  threats  from  fanatics 
reached  me,  and  in  my  nervous  condition  it  was  not 
hard  for  me  to  believe  that  my  life  was  in  danger. 
Then,  too,  it  seemed  that  all  the  money  I  had  made 
might  be  spent  in  efforts  to  defend  myself.  I  decided 
to  protect  my  wife  and  children  by  life  insurance.  How 
Dunkle  guessed  this — if  he  did — I  do  not  know.  But 
at  just  the  right  moment  he  appeared,  and  I  fell  into  the 
insurance  trap. 

At  the  time  I  did  not  know  that  Dunkle  had  been 
a  professional  "subscription-raiser,"  who,  while  I  was 
in  the  North,  had  volunteered  to  raise  money  for  a  relief 
expedition — provided  he  was  given  an  exorbitant  per- 
centage. 

For  this  reason  both  Anthony  Fiala  and  Dillon 
Wallace  had  refused  to  introduce  him  to  me  before  he 
secured  the  introduction  by  Mr.  Bradley.  When  Mrs. 
Cook  first  saw  him,  with  feminine  intuition  she  said : 

"Don't  have  anything  to  do  with  that  man.  I 
don't  like  his  looks." 

I  did  not  heed  this,  however.  After  some  futile 
life  insurance  talk,  he  surprised  me  by  saying  irrele- 
vantly : 

"By  the  way,  I  have  an  expert  navigator,  a  friend 
of  mine,  who  can  prove  that  Peary  was  not  at  the  Pole." 

"I  have  not  challenged  Mr.  Peary's  claim,"  I  re- 
plied, "and  do  not  wish  to.  The  New  York  Herald, 
however,  may  listen  to  what  you  have  to  say."  That 
was  all  that  was  said  at  the  time. 


THE  DUNKLE-LOOSE  FORGERY  537 

After  my  return  from  the  western  lecture  tour, 
Dunkle  seemed  to  be  always  around,  and  at  every  oppor- 
tunity spoke  to  me.  He  gained  a  measure  of  confidence 
by  criticising  the  press  campaign  waged  against  me.  I 
naturally  felt  kindly  toward  anyone  who  was  sympa- 
thetic. At  this  time,  when  the  problem  of  accurate 
observations  was  worrying  me,  when  my  mind  was 
beginning  to  weigh  the  problem  of  scientific  accuracy — 
again  just  at  the  psychological  moment — Dunkle 
brought  Loose  out  to  the  Gramatan  Inn  and  intro- 
duced him  to  me,  saying  that  he  was  an  expert 
navigator. 

Pretending  a  knowledge  of  the  situation  in  Europe, 
Loose  told  me  the  Danes  were  becoming  impatient.  I 
replied  that  I  was  busy  preparing  my  report. 

"Something  ought  to  be  done  in  the  meantime,"  he 
said.  "Now,  I  have  connections  with  some  of  the  Scan- 
dinavian papers,  and  I  think  some  friendly  articles  in 
the  meantime  would  allay  this  unrest." 

The  idea  seemed  reasonable;  anything  that  would 
help  me  was  welcome,  and  I  told  Loose,  if  he  wanted  to, 
that  he  might  go  ahead.  He  visited  me  several  times, 
and  broached  the  subject  of  the  possible  outcome  of  the 
Copenhagen  verdict.  By  this  time  I  felt  fairly  friendly 
with  him.  Finally  he  brought  me  several  articles. 
They  seemed  weak  and  irrelevant.  Lonsdale  read 
them,  said  there  was  not  much  to  them,  but  that  they 
might  help.  Loose  mailed  the  articles — or  said  he  did. 
Then,  to  my  amazement,  he  made  the  audacious  sugges- 
tion that  I  let  him  go  over  my  material.  I  flatly 
refused. 

He  pointed"  out,  what  I  myself  had  been  thinking 


538  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

about,  that  all  observations  were  subject  to  extreme 
inaccuracy.  He  suggested  his  working  mine  out  back- 
ward to  verify  them.  As  I  regarded  him  as  an  experi- 
enced navigator,  I  thought  this  of  interest.  I  was  not 
a  navigator,  and,  moreover,  had  had  no  chance  of  check- 
ing my  figures.  So,  desiring  an  independent  view,  and 
thinking  that  another  man's  method  might  satisfy  any 
doubts,  I  told  him  to  go  ahead,  using  the  figures  pub- 
lished in  my  story  in  the  New  York  Herald. 

At  the  time  I  told  him  to  purchase  for  me  a  "Bow- 
ditch  Navigator,"  which  I  lacked,  and  any  other  alma- 
nacs and  charts  he  needed  for  himself.  He  came  out  to 
the  Gramatan  to  live.  Arrangements  for  his  stay  had 
been  made  by  Dunkle — under  the  name  of  Lewis,  I  have 
been  told  since — but  I  knew  nothing  of  this  at  the  time. 
I  gave  Loose  $250,  which  was  to  compensate  him  in  full 
for  the  articles  and  his  running  expenses.  It  struck  me 
that  he  took  an  unnecessarily  long  time  to  finish  his 
work  of  checking  my  calculations. 

Late  one  night,  returning  from  the  city,  I  went  to 
Hs  room.  Dunkle  was  there.  Papers  were  strewn  all 
over  the  room. 

"Well,"  said  Loose,  "I  think  we  have  this  thing  all 
fixed  up." 

Dunkle,  smooth-tongued  and  friendly  as  ever,  said, 
"Now,  Doctor,  I  want  to  advise  you  to  put  your  own 
observations  aside.  Send  these  to  Copenhagen!" 

I  looked  up  amazed,  incredulous.  I  felt  stunned 
for  the  moment,  and  said  little.  I  then  took  the  trouble 
to  look  over  all  the  papers  carefully.  There  was  a  full 
set  of  faked  observations.  The  examination  took  me 
an  hour.  During  that  time  Dunkle  and  Loose  were 


THE  DUNKLE-LOOSE  FORGERY  539 

talking  in  a  low  tone.  I  did  not  hear  what  they  said. 
I  saw  at  once  the  game  the  rascals  had  been  playing. 
The  insinuation  of  their  nefarious  suggestion  for  the 
moment  cleared  my  mind,  and  a  dull  anger  filled  me. 

"Gentlemen,"  I  said,  "pack  up  every  scrap  of  this 
paper  in  that  dress-suit  case.  Take  all  of  your  belong- 
ings and  leave  this  hotel  at  once." 

I  stood  there  while  they  did  so.  Not  a  word  was 
spoken.  Sheepish  and  silent,  they  shuffled  from  the 
room,  ashamed  and  taken  aback.  Sick  at  heart  at  the 
thought  that  these  men  should  have  considered  me 
unscrupulous  enough  to  buy  and  use  their  faked  figures, 
I  went  to  my  room.  From  that  day — November  22 — I 
have  not  received  a  letter  or  telegram  from  either. 

Months  later,  in  South  America,  I  read  with  horri- 
fied amazement  a  summary  of  the  account  of  this  occur- 
rence, sold  by  Dunkle  and  Loose  to  the  New  York 
Times.  Distorted  and  twisted  as  it  was  I  doubt  if  even 
the  Times  would  have  used  it  had  Dunkle  and  Loose  not 
forced  the  lie  that  these  faked  figures  were  sent  to 
Copenhagen.  They  knew,  as  God  knows,  that  every 
jscrap  of  paper  on  which  they  wrote  was  packed  in  a 
suit-case  as  dirty  as  the  intent  of  their  sin-blotted  paper. 

If  my  report  to  the  Copenhagen  University  proved 
anything,  it  was,  by  comparison,  figure  by  figure,  with 
the  affidavits  published,  that  in  this  at  least  I  was  guilty 
of  no  fraud. 

In  a  re-examination  later,  a  handwriting  expert  has 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  name  of  Loose  was 
forged,  and  Loose  was  later  put  in  jail  for  another 
offense.  To  the  city  editor  of  a  New  York  evening 
paper  Loose  offered  to  sell  a  story  retracting  the 


540  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

charges  published  in  the  Times.  Dunkle  admitted  to 
witnesses  that  he  had  been  paid  for  the  affidavit  pub- 
lished in  the  New  York  Times.  Loose,  willing  to  dis- 
credit the  Times  story,  said,  however,  he  "wanted  big 
money"  for  a  retraction.  One  question  that  is  forced  in 
the  interest  of  fair-play  is,  Why  did  the  New  York 
Times,  without  investigation,  print  a  news  item  by 
which  a  man's  honor  is  attacked,  which  is  not  only  a 
perjury  but  a  forgery?  The  managing  editor  was 
shown  the  evidence  of  this  forgery,  admitted  its  force, 
but  not  a  word  was  printed  to  counteract  the  harm  done 
by  printing  false  news. 

Captain  E.  B.  Baldwin,  a  year  later,  discovered 
that  this  pro-Peary  faked  stuff  was  in  possession  of 
Professor  James  H.  Gore,  one  of  Mr.  Peary's  friends  in 
the  National  Geographic  Society,  which  prostituted  its 
name  for  Peary  by  passing  upon  valueless  "proofs." 
From  the  methods  pursued  by  this  society  later,  I  am 
inclined  to  the  belief  that  the  Dunkle-Loose  fake  was 
concocted  for  members  of  this  society.  If  not,  how  does 
it  happen  that  Professor  Gore  is  in  possession  of  this 
faked,  forged,  and  perjured  stuff ? 


HOW  A  GEOGRAPHIC   SOCIETY  PROSTI- 
TUTED ITS  NAME 

XXXVI 

THE  WASHINGTON  VERDICT — THE  COPENHAGEN 
VERDICT 

While  one  group  of  pro-Peary  men  were  early 
engaged  in  various  conspiracies,  extending  from  New 
York  to  the  Pacific  coast,  fabricating  false  charges, 
faking,  and  forging  news  items  designed  to  injure  me, 
men  higher  up  in  Washington  were  planning  other 
deceptions  behind  closed  doors.  The  Mt.  McKinley 
bribery  and  the  Dunkle-Loose  humbug  had  the  desired 
effect  in  reducing  the  opposition  in  Washington,  and  by 
December  of  1909  the  controversy  was  settled  to  Mr. 
Peary's  satisfaction  by  a  group  of  men  who,  by  decep- 
tion, betrayed  public  trust. 

The  National  Geographic  Society  very  early 
assumed  a  meddlesome  air  in  an  effort  to  dictate  the 
distribution  of  Polar  honors.  With  the  excuse  that 
they  would  give  a  gold  medal  to  him  who  could  prove 
priority  to  the  claim  of  Polar  discovery,  they  began  a 
series  of  movements  that  would  put  a  dishonorable 
political  campaign  to  shame.  In  the  light  of  later 
developments,  medals  from  this  society  are  regarded  by 
true  scientific  workers  as  badges  of  dishonor.  By  way 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

of  explanation,  one  of  the  officers  said  that  they  made 
it  a  rule  to  examine  all  original  field  observations  before 
the  society  honored  an  explorer.  This  was  a  deliberate 
falsehood,  for  no  explorer  going  to  Washington  had 
previously  packed  his  field  papers  and  instruments  for 
inspection.  If  so,  then  this  society  again  convicts  itself 
of  a  humbug,  as  it  did  later.  Mr.  Peary  had  been  given 
a  gold  medal  for  his  claim  of  having  reached  the  far- 
thest north  in  1906.  Peary  admitted  that  his  position 
rested  on  one  imperfect  observation.  I  happened, 
quite  by  accident,  to  be  in  a  position,  soon  after  Peary's 
return,  to  examine  the  instruments  with  which  the 
farthest  north  observations  had  been  made.  Every 
apparatus  was  so  bent  and  bruised  that  further  observa- 
tions were  impossible.  Of  course  Peary  will  say  that 
the  instruments  were  injured  en  route  on  the  return. 
But  this  does  not  excuse  the  idle  boast  of  the  members 
of  the  National  Geographic  Society,  who  said  that  they 
always  examined  a  returning  explorer's  field  notes  and 
apparatus,  when  in  this  case  they  did  not  see  Mr. 
Peary's  observations  nor  his  instruments. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  National  Geographic,  like 
every  other  geographic  society,  had  previously  rated  the 
merits  of  an  explorer's  work  by  his  published  reports. 
Their  tactics  were  now  changed  to  bring  about  a  position 
where  they  might  focus  the  controversy  to  Mr.  Peary's 
and  their  advantage.  There  would  have  been  no  harm 
in  this  effort,  if  it  had  been  honest;  but,  as  we  will  see 
presently,  falsehood  and  deception  were  evident  in 
every  move. 

The  position  of  the  National  Geographic  Society 
is  very  generally  misunderstood  because  of  its  preten- 


PROSTITUTED  ITS  NAME  543 

tious  use  of  the  word  "National."  In  reality,  it  is 
neither  national  nor  geographic.  It  is  a  kind  of  self- 
admiration  society,  which  serves  the  mission  of  a 
lecture  bureau.  It  has  no  connection  with  the  Govern- 
ment and  has  no  geographic  authority  save  that  which  it 
assumes.  As  a  lecture  bureau  it  had  retained  Mr.  Peary 
to  fill  an  important  position  as  its  principal  star  for 
many  years.  To  keep  him  in  the  field  as  their  head-line 
attraction  they  had  paid  $1,000  to  Mr.  Peary  for  the 
very  venture  now  in  question.  This  so-called  "Na- 
tional" Geographic  Society  was,  therefore,  a  stock  owner 
in  the  venture  upon  which  they  passed  as  an  unbiased 
jury- 

Of  course  Mr.  Peary  consented  to  rest  his  case  in 
their  hands;  but,  for  reasons  above  indicated  and  for 
others  given  below,  I  refused  to  have  any  dealings  with 
such  an  unfair  combination.  The  Government  was 
appealed  to,  and  every  political  and  private  wire  was 
pulled  to  compel  me  to  submit  my  case  to  a  packed 
jury.  During  all  the  time  when  this  was  done,  its 
moving  spirits,  Gilbert  Grosvenor  and  Admiral  Chester, 
were  publicly  and  privately  saying  things  about  me  and 
my  attainment  of  the  Pole  that  no  gentleman  would 
utter.  That  Mr.  Peary  was  a  member  of  this  society; 
that  his  friends  were  absolute  dictators  of  the  power  of 
appointment;  that  they  were  stock  owners  in  Mr. 
Peary's  enterprise — all  of  this,  and  a  good  many  other 
facts,  were  carefully  suppressed.  To  the  public  this 
society  declared  they  were  "neutral,  unbiased  and  scien- 
tific"— no  more  deliberate  lie  than  which  was  ever  forced 
upon  the  public. 

Of  course  I  refused  to  place  my  case  in  dishonest 


544  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

pro-Peary  hands.  With  shameless  audacity  this  society 
helped  Mr.  Peary  carry  along  his  press  campaign  by 
disseminating  the  cowardly  slurs  of  Grosvenor,  Chester, 
and  others.  They  watched  and  encouraged  the 
McKinley  bribery ;  they  closed  their  eyes  to  the  Kennan 
lies.  Through  Chester  and  others,  they  faked  pages  of 
sensational  pseudo-scientific  news,  all  with  the  one  cen- 
tered aim  of  forcing  doubt  on  opposing  interests  before 
the  crucial  moment,  when,  behind  closed  doors,  the  mat- 
ter could  be  settled  to  their  liking. 

Thus,  when  Peary,  his  club,  and  his  affiliated 
boosters  at  Washington  were  carrying  their  press  slan- 
ders to  a  focus,  there  came  a  loud  cry  from  the  National 
Geographic  Society  for  proofs. 

With  some  wrangling,  and  a  good  deal  of  protest 
from  half-hearted  men,  like  Professor  Moore,  a  jury 
was  appointed  to  pass  upon  Mr.  Peary's  claims  and 
mine.  My  claims  were  to  be  passed  upon  against  my 
will.  Unbiased  and  real  Arctic  explorers  like  General 
Greely  and  Admiral  Schley  were  carefully  excluded 
from  this  jury.  Instead,  armchair  geographers,  who 
were  closely  related  to  the  Peary  interests,  were  ap- 
pointed as  a  "neutral  jury,"  as  follows: 

Henry  Gannett,  a  close  personal  friend  of  Mr. 
Peary. 

C.  M.  Chester,  related  to  Mr.  Peary's  fur  trader,  a 
member  of  a  coterie  that  divided  the  profits  of  fleecing 
the  Eskimos. 

O.  H.  Tittman,  chief  of  a  department  under  which 
part  of  Mr.  Peary's  work  was  done. 

With  a  flourish  of  trumpets,  including  pages  of 
self -boosting  news  distributed  by  Mr.  Peary's  press 


PROSTITUTED  ITS  NAME  545 

agents,  this  commission  began  its  important  investiga- 
tion. At  the  time,  it  was  said  that  all  of  Mr.  Peary's 
original  field  papers  and  instruments  were  under  careful 
scrutiny.  Later  it  was  shown  that  one  of  the  jury  saw 
only  COPIES.  On  November  4,  1909,  was  issued  the 
verdict  of  this  jury :  "That  Commander  Peary  reached 
the  North  Pole  on  April  6, 1909." 

This  verdict,  at  its  face  value,  was  fair;  but  the 
circumstances  which  surrounded  it  before  and  after 
were  such  as  to  raise  a  doubt  that  can  never  be  removed. 
With  the  verdict  came  the  insinuation  that  no  one  else 
had  reached  the  Pole  before  Peary;  that  my  claim  of 
priority  was  dishonest.  A  nagging  press  campaign 
continued  to  emanate  from  Washington, 

I  have  no  objection  to  Mr.  Peary's  friends 
endorsing  him — a  friend  who  will  stretch  a  point  is  not 
to  be  condemned.  But  when  such  friends  stoop  to  dis- 
honorable methods  to  inflict  injury  upon  others,  then  a 
protest  is  in  order.  My  aim  here  is  not  to  deny  that 
Mr.  Peary  reached  the  Pole  near  enough  for  all  prac- 
tical purposes,  but  to  show  how  men  sacrificed  their 
word  of  honor  to  boost  Mr.  Peary  and  to  discredit  me. 

The  verdict  of  this  jury  which  was  to  settle  the 
controversy  for  all  time  was  sent  out  on  wires  that 
encircled  the  globe.  Soon  after  there  was  a  call  for  the 
data  upon  which  that  jury  passed.  The  public  called 
for  it ;  the  Government  called  for  it ;  foreign  geograph- 
ical societies  asked  for  it.  No  one  was  allowed  to  see 
the  wonderful  "proofs."  Why? 

Officially,  that  commission  said  that  Mr.  Peary's 
contract  with  a  magazine  prevented  the  publication  of 
the  "proofs."  But  every  member  of  the  commission 


546  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

was  on  the  Government  pay-roll.  Why,  may  we  ask, 
should  a  Government  official  be  muzzled  with  a  bid  for 
commercial  gain?  This  contract  was  held  by  Benjamin 
Hampton,  of  Hampton's  Magazine.  If  Hampton's 
contract  muzzled  the  Government  officials,  Mr.  Hamp- 
ton thought  so  little  of  the  so-called  "proofs"  that  he 
did  not  print  them.  For,  in  Hampton's  installment, 
with  the  eye-attracting  title,  "Peary  Proofs  Positive," 
the  real  data  upon  which  the  Peary  case  rests  were 
eliminated.  Why?  In  Mr.  Peary's  own  book  that 
material  is  again  suppressed.  Why?  For  the  same 
reason  that  the  jury  was  muzzled.  The  material  would 
not  bear  public  scrutiny! 

The  real  difficulty  is  that,  in  the  haste  to  floor  rival 
claims,  Mr.  Peary  and  all  his  biased  helpers  fixed  as  the 
crucial  test  of  Polar  attainment  an  examination  of  field 
observations.  Mr.  Peary  had  his ;  he  had  refused  to  let 
Whitney  bring  part  of  mine  from  the  Xorth;  and, 
therefore,  he  and  his  friends  supposed  that  I  was  help- 
less, by  assuming  this  false  position.  But  when  Mr. 
Peary's  own  material  was  examined,  it  was  found  that 
his  position  rested  on  a  set  of  worthless  observations- 
calculations  of  altitudes  of  the  sun  so  low  that  it  is 
questionable  if  the  observation  could  have  been  made  at 
all.  So  long  as  three  men,  behind  closed  doors,  could 
be  made  to  say  "Yes,  Peary  reached  the  Pole,"  and  so 
long  as  this  verdict  came  with  the  authority  of  a  Geo- 
graphic Society  and  the  seeming  endorsement  of 
national  prestige,  the  false  position  could  be  impressed 
upon  the  pubic  as  a  bona-fide  verdict.  But,  with  pub- 
licity, the  whole  railroading  game  would  be  spoiled. 
These  three  men  could  be  influenced.  But  there  are  a 


PROSTITUTED  ITS  NAME  547 

hundred  thousand  other  men  in  the  world  whose  lives 
depend  upon  their  knowledge  of  just  such  observations 
as  were  here  involved.  They  knew  publicity  would 
bring  the  attention  of  these  men  to  the  fact  that  Mr. 
Peary's  polar  claim  rests  upon  the  impossible  observa- 
tions of  a  sun  at  an  altitude  less  than  7°  above  the 
horizon.  The  three  armchair  geographers,  seldom  out 
of  reach  of  dusty  book-shelves,  passed  upon  these 
worthless  observations.  Not  one  of  one  hundred 
thousand  honest  sextant  experts  would  credit  such  an 
observation  as  that  upon  which  Mr.  Peary's  case  rests — 
not  even  in  home  regions,  where  for  centuries  tables  for 
corrections  have  been  gathered. 

*A  year  later,  at  the  Congressional  investigation  of 
the  Naval  Committee  in  Washington,  Mr.  Peary  and 
two  of  his  jurors  admitted  that  in  the  much-heralded 
Peary  proofs  "there  was  no  proof."  Members  of  the 
Geographic  Society  acknowledged  their  "examination" 
of  Peary's  instruments  was  made  in  the  Pennsylvania 


*When  Mr.  Peary  first  returned  from  the  North,  and  began  his 
attacks  upon  me,  he  caused  a  demand  for  "proofs"  through  the  New  York 
Times  and  its  affiliated  papers;  he  had  them  call  for  my  instruments;  he 
insinuated  that  I  had  had  no  instruments  with  me  in  the  North  (despite 
the  fact  that  Captain  Bartlett  had  informed  him  that  my  own  Eskimos 
had  testified  that  I  had) ;  he  declared  that  any  Polar  claim  must  be  estab- 
lished by  an  examination  of  observations  and  an  examination  of  the 
explorer's  instruments. 

In  view  of  the  unwarranted  newspaper  call  for  "proofs,"  I  was  em- 
barrassed by  having  left  my  instruments  with  Whitney.  Mr.  Peary  had 
his,  however.  But  were  they  carefully  examined  by  the  august  body  who 
so  eagerly  decided  he  reached  the  Pole?  Was  the  verdict  of  the  self- 
appointed  arbiters  of  the  so-called  National  Geographic  Society  based 
upon  such  examination  as  Mr.  Peary — concerning  my  case — had  declared 
necessary? 

Testifying  before  the  subcommittee  of  the  Committee  on  Naval  Affairs, 
when  the  move  was  on  to  have  Peary  made  a  Rear-Admiral,  Henry  Gan- 
nett, one  of  the  three  members  of  the  National  Geographic  Society,  who 
had  passed  on  Peary's  claim,  admitted  that  their  examination  of  Mr.  Peary's 
instruments  was  casually  and  hastily  made  in  the  Pennsylvania  Station  at 


548  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

Station,  when  they  opened  Mr.  Peary's  trunk  and* 
casually  looked  over  its  contents.  Therefore,  JMr. 
Peary's  claim  for  a  second  victory  now  rests  upon  his 
book. 

In  forcing  the  controversy,  the  press  and  the  public 
have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  one  or  the  other  report 
must  be  discredited.  This  is  an  incorrect  point  of  view. 
Each  case  must  be  judged  upon  its  own  merits.  To 
prove  my  case,  it  is  not  necessary  to  disprove  Peary's; 
nor,  to  prove  Peary's,  should  it  have  been  necessary  to 
try  to  disprove  mine. 

Much  has  been  said  about  my  case  resting  in  for- 
eign hands.  This  came  about  in  a  natural  way.  It  was 

Washington.  When  Peary  later  appeared  in  person  before  the  committee, 
he  admitted  having  come  to  Washington  from  Portland,  Maine,  to  consult 
with  the  members  of  the  National  Geographic  Society  who  were  to  examine 
his  proofs,  and  that  he  had  brought  his  instruments  with  him  in  a  trunk, 
which  was  left  at  the  station.  The  following  took  place  (See  official  Con- 
gressional Report,  Private  Calendar  No.  733,  Sixty-first  Congress,  Third 
Session,  House  of  Representatives,  Report  No.  1961,  pages  21  and  22): 

"Mr.  Roberts — How  did  the  instruments  come  down? 

"Captain  Pea-ry — They  came  in  a  trunk. 

"Mr.  Roberts— Your  trunk? 

"Captain  Peary — Yes. 

"Mr.  Roberts — After  you  reached  the  station  and  found  the  trunk, 
what  did  you  and  the  committee  do  regarding  the  instruments? 

"Captain  Peary — I  should  say  that  we  opened  the  trunk  there  in  the 
station. 

"Mr.  Roberts — That  is,  in  the  baggage-room  of  the  station? 

"Captain  Peary— Yes. 

"Mr.  Roberts — Were  the  instruments  all  taken  out? 

"Captain  Peary — That  I  could  not  say.  Members  of  the  committee 
will  probably  remember  better  than  I. 

rtMr.  Roberts — Well,  do  you  not  have  any  recollection  of  whether 
they  took  them  out  and  examined  them? 

"Captain  Peary — Some  were  taken  out,  I  should  say;  whether  all  were 
taken  out  I  could  not  say. 

"Mr.  Roberts — Was  any  test  of  those  instruments  made  by  any  mem- 
ber of  the  committee  to  ascertain  whether  or  not  the  instruments  were 
inaccurate  ? 

"Captain  Peary — That  I  could  not  say.  I  should  imagine  that  it  would 
not  be  possible  to  make  tests  there. 

"Mr.  Roberts — Were  those  instruments  ever  in  the  possession  of  the 
committee  other  than  the  inspection  at  the  station? 


PROSTITUTED  ITS  NAME  549 

not  intended  to  convey  the  idea  that  my  own  country- 
men were  incompetent  or  dishonest.  In  the  case  of  the 
National  Geographic  Society  they  have  irretrievably 
prostituted  their  name;  but  the  same  is  not  true  of  other 
American  authorities. 

When  I  came  to  Copenhagen,  the  Danish  Geo- 
graphic Society  gave  me  a  first  spontaneous  hearing. 
The  Copenhagen  University  honored  me.  It  was, 
therefore,  but  proper  that  the  Danes  should  be  the  first 
to  pass  upon  the  merits  of  my  claim.  While  these 
arrangements  were  in  progress,  I  met  Professor  Thorp, 
the  Rector  of  the  University  of  Copenhagen,  at  the 
American  Legation.  I  did  not  know  the  purport  of 
that  meeting,  nor  of  his  detailed,  careful  questions;  but 
on  the  6th  of  September  appeared  an  official  statement 
in  the  press  reports.  In  these  it  was  stated  that  the 

"Captain  Peary— NOT  TO  MY  KNOWLEDGE." 

NOTE. — This,  then,  was  the  basis  of  the  glorious  verdict  of  the  packed 
jury  which  assailed  me;  which  demanded  as  necessary  instruments  of  me 
which  had  been  left  in  the  North,  and  which  posed  as  a  fair  body  of 
experts ! 

All  important  questions  asked  of  Peary,  Tittman  and  Gannett  were 
hedged,  their  aim  being  to  avoid  publicity.  In  substance,  they  admitted 
that  in  the  "Peary  Proofs,"  passed  upon  a  year  before,  there  was  no 
proof.  They  admitted  that  their  favorable  verdict  was  reached  upon  an 
examination  of  COPIES  of  Mr.  Peary's  observations,  and  that  the  examina- 
tion and  decision  occurred  at  a  sort  of  social  gathering  in  the  house  of 
Admiral  Chester,  who  had  attacked  me.  Chairman  Roberts,  commenting 
on  the  testimony,  wrote  (see  page  15): 

"From  these  extracts  from  the  testimony  it  will  be  seen  that  Mr. 
Gannett,  after  his  careful  examination  of  Captain  Peary's  proofs  and 
records,  did  not  know  how  many  days  it  took  Captain  Peary  from  the 
time  he  left  Bartlett  to  reach  the  Pole  and  return  to  the  Roosevelt,  that 
information  being  supplied  by  a  Mr.  Grosvenor.  It  will  be  also  observed 
that  Mr.  Gannett,  as  a  result  of  his  careful  examination  of  Captain 
Peary's  proofs  and  records,  gives  Captain  Peary,  in  his  final  dash  to  the 
Pole,  the  following  equipment:  Two  sledges,  36  or  32  dogs,  2  Eskimos, 
and  Henson.  It  will  be  seen  later  from  Captain  Peary's  testimony,  that 
he  had  on  that  final  dash  40  dogs,  5  sledges,  and  a  total  of  six  men  in 
his  party.  This  discrepancy  on  so  vital  a  point  must  seem  quite  con- 
clusive that  the  examination  of  the  Geographic  Society's  committee  was 
anything  but  careful." 


550  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

meeting  had  been  arranged  to  satisfy  the  University 
authorities  as  to  whether  the  Pole  had  been  reached. 
Among  other  things,  Professor  Thorp  said : 

"As  there  were  certain  questions  of  a  special  astro- 
nomical nature  with  which  I  myself  was  not  sufficiently 
acquainted,  I  called  in  our  greatest  astronomical  scien- 
tist, Professor  Stromgren,  who  put  an  exhaustive  series 
of  mathematical,  technical  and  natural  scientific  ques- 
tions to  Dr.  Cook,  based  particularly  on  those  of  his 
contentions  on  which  some  doubts  had  been  cast. 

"Dr.  Cook  answered  all  to  our  full  satisfaction. 
He  showed  no  nervousness  or  excitement  at  any  time. 
I  dare  say,  therefore,  that  there  is  no  justification  for 
anybody  to  throw  the  slightest  doubt  on  his  claim  to 
have  reached  the  Pole  and  the  means  by  which  he  did  it. 
Professor  Stromgren  and  I  are  entirely  satisfied  with 
the  evidence." 

I  have  always  maintained  that  the  proof  of  an 
explorer's  doings  was  not  to  be  found  in  a  few  dis- 
connected figures,  but  in  the  continuity  of  his  final 
book  which  presents  his  case.  To  this  end  I  prepared 
a  report,  accompanied  by  the  important  part  of  the 
original  field  notes  and  a  complete  set  of  reduced 
observations.  These  were  submitted  to  the  University 
of  Copenhagen  in  December  of  1909.  The  verdict  on 
this  was  that  in  such  material  there  was  no  absolute 
proof  of  the  attainment  of  the  Pole. 

The  Peary  press  agents  were  in  Copenhagen,  and 
sent  this  news  out  so  as  to  convey  the  idea  that  Copen- 
hagen had  denounced  me;  that,  in  their  opinion,  the 
Pole  had  not  been  reached  as  claimed,  and  that  I  had 
hoaxed  the  world  for  sordid  gain;  all  of  which  was 


PROSTITUTED  ITS  NAME  551 

untrue.  But  the  press  flaunted  my  name  in  big  head- 
lines as  a  faker. 

"In  the  Cook  data  there  is  no  proof,"  they  repeated 
as  the  verdict  of  Copenhagen. 

A  year  later  Mr.  Peary  and  his  jurors  confessed 
unwillingly  in  Congress  that  in  the  Peary  data  there 
was  no  proof. 

This  was  reported  in  the  official  Congressional 
pamphlets,  but,  so  far  as  I  know,  not  a  single  newspaper 
displayed  the  news.  The  two  cases,  therefore,  so  far  as 
verdicts  go,  are  parallel. 

Wearied  of  the  whole  problem  of  undesirable  pub- 
licity; mentally  and  physically  exhausted;  disgusted 
with  the  detestable  and  slanderous  campaign,  which,  for 
Mr.  Peary,  the  press  forced  unremittingly,  I  decided  to 
go  away  for  a  year,  to  rest  and  recuperate.  This  could 
not  be  done  if  I  took  the  press  into  my  confidence;  and, 
therefore,  I  quietly  departed  from  New  York,  to  be 
joined  by  my  family  later.  Out  of  the  public  eye,  life, 
for  me,  assumed  a  new  interest.  In  the  meantime,  the 
public  agitation  was  stilled.  Time  gave  a  better  per- 
spective to  the  case;  Mr.  Peary  got  that  for  which  his 
hand  had  reached.  He  was  made  a  Rear- Admiral,  with 
a  pension  of  $6,000  under  retirement. 

By  the  time  I  had  resolved  my  case,  I  received 
through  my  brother,  William  L.  Cook,  of  Brooklyn, 
and  my  London  solicitor,  various  offers  from  news- 
papers and  magazines  for  any  statement  I  desired  to 
make.  Because  I  had  gone  away  quietly  and  remained 
in  seclusion,  the  newspapers  had  inflamed  the  public 
with  an  abnormal  curiosity  in  my  so-called  mysterious 
disappearance.  This  fact  imparted  a  great  sensational 


552  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

value  to  any  news  of  my  public  reappearance  or  to  any 
statement  which  I  might  make.  Eager  to  secure  a 
"beat,"  newspapers  were  offering  my  brother  as  high  as 
one  thousand  dollars  merely  for  my  address.  The 
New  York  newspaper  which  had  led  the  attack  against 
me  sent  an  offer,  through  my  London  solicitor,  of  any 
figure  which  I  might  make  for  my  first  exclusive  state- 
ment to  the  public.  One  magazine  offered  me  ten 
thousand  dollars  for  a  series  of  articles. 

While  in  London  I  received  a  message  from  Mr. 
T.  Everett  Harry,  of  Hampton's  Magazine,  concern- 
ing the  publication  of  a  series  of  articles  explaining  my 
case.  Mr.  Harry  came  to  London  and  talked  over 
plans  for  these.  The  opportunity  of  addressing  the 
same  public,  through  the  same  medium,  as  Mr.  Peary 
had  in  his  serial  story,  strongly  influenced  me — in  fact, 
so  strongly  that,  while  I  had  a  standing  offer  of  ten 
thousand  dollars,  I  finally  gave  my  articles  to  Hamp- 
ton's for  little  more  than  four  thousand  dollars. 

In  order  that  Hampton's  Magazine  might  benefit 
by  the  publicity  attaching  to  my  first  statement,  and  in 
response  to  the  editor's  request,  I  came  quietly  to  the 
United  States  with  Mr.  Harry,  by  way  of  Canada,  to 
consult  with  the  editor  before  making  final  arrange- 
ments. Mr.  Harry  and  I  had  agreed  upon  the  outline 
for  the  articles.  They  were  to  be  a  series  of  heart-to- 
heart  talks,  embodying  the  psychological  phases  of  the 
Polar  controversy  and  my  own  actions.  In  these  I 
determined  fully  to  state  my  case,  explain  the  ungra- 
cious controversy,  and  analyze  the  impossibility  of 
mathematically  ascertaining  the  Pole  or  of  proving  such 
a  claim  by  figures.  The  articles  that  eventually 


PROSTITUTED  ITS  NAME  553 

appeared  in  Hampton's,  with  the  exception  of  unauthor- 
ized editorial  changes  and  excisions  of  vitally  important 
matter  concerning  Mr.  Peary,  were  practically  the  same 
as  planned  in  London. 

Coming  down  from  Quebec,  I  stopped  in  Troy, 
New  York,  to  await  Mr.  Hampton,  who  was  to  come 
from  New*  York.  While  there,  a  sub-editor,  with  all 
a  newspaper  man's  sensational  instincts,  came  to  see  me. 
He  communicated,  it  seems,  a  brilliant  scheme  for  a 
series  of  articles.  As  he  outlined  it,  I  was  to  go  secretly 
to  New  York,  submit  myself  to  several  employed  alien- 
ists who  should  pronounce  me  insane,  whereupon  I  was 
to  write  several  articles  in  which  I  should  admit  having 
arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  I  reached  the  Pole  while 
mentally  unbalanced!  This  admission  was  to  be  sup- 
ported by  the  alienists'  purchased  report !  This  plan,  I 
was  told,  would  "put  me  right"  and  make  a  great 
sensational  story ! 

When  I  was  told  of  this  I  felt  staggered.  Did 
people — could  they — deem  me  such  a  hoax  that,  in 
order  to  obtain  an  unwarranted  sympathy,  or  to  make 
money,  I  should  be  willing  to  admit  to  such  a  shameful, 
mad,  atrocious  and  despicable  lie?  I  said  nothing  when 
the  suggestion  was  made.  At  heart,  I  felt  achingly 
hurt.  I  felt  that  this  newspaper  man,  not  hesitating 
at  deceiving  the  public  in  order  to  get  a  sensation, 
regarded  me  as  a  scoundrel.  I  was  learning,  too,  as  I 
had  throughout  the  heart-bitter  controversy,  the 
duplicity  of  human  nature. 

After  a  talk  with  Mr.  Hampton,  who  finally 
arrived,  and  who,  I  am  glad  to  say,  had  no  such  sugges- 
tion himself  to  offer,  I  got  to  work  on  my  articles  after 


554  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

the  general  plan  spoken  of  in  London.  These 
were  written  at  the  Palatine  Hotel,  in  New- 
burgh.  The  articles  finished,  I  returned  to  London  to 
settle  certain  business  matter  prior  to  my  public  return 
to  America  by  Christmas. 

Imagine  my  amazed  indignation  when,  shortly 
before  sailing,  the  cables  brought  the  untrue  news,  "Dr. 
Cook  Confesses."  Imagine  my  heart-aching  dismay 
when,  on  reaching  the  shores  of  my  native  country,  I 
found  the  magazine  which  was  running  the  articles  in 
which  I  hoped  to  explain  myself,  had  blazoned  the 
sensation-provoking  lie  over  its  cover — "Dr.  Cook's 
Confession." 

I  had  made  no  confession.  I  had  made  the  admis- 
sion that  I  was  uncertain  as  to  having  reached  the  exact 
mathematical  Pole.  That  same  admission  Mr.  Peary 
would  have  to  make  had  he  been  pinned  down.  He  did 
make  this  admission,  in  fact,  while  his  own  articles,  a 
year  before,  were  being  prepared,  in  the  Hampton's 
office. 

In  order  to  advertise  itself,  the  magazine  employed 
the  trick  of  construing  a  mere  admission  of  uncertainty 
as  to  the  exact  pin-point  attainment  of  the  Pole  as  a 
"confession."  To  the  public  I  had  apparently  author- 
ized this.  The  misrepresentation  hurt  me,  and  for  a 
time  placed  me  in  an  unhappy  dilemma. 

Before  the  appearance  of  the  January  Hampton's, 
in  which  the  first  instalment  of  my  articles  appeared, 
a  series  of  press  stories  supposedly  based  upon  my  forth- 
coming articles  were  prepared  and  sent  out  by  the  sub- 
editor who  had  suggested  the  insanity  plan.  These  were 
prepared  during  the  absence  of  Mr.  Harry  in  Atlantic 


PROSTITUTED  ITS  NAME  555 

City.  By  picking  garbled  extracts  from  my  articles 
about  the  impossibility  of  a  pin-point  determination  of 
the  Pole,  and  the  crazy  mirage-effects  of  the  Arctic 
world,  these  news-stories  were  construed  to  the  effect 
that  I  admitted  I  did  not  know  whether  I  had  been  at 
the  North  Pole  or  whether  I  had  not  been  at  the  North 
Pole,  and  also  that  I  admitted  to  a  plea  of  insanity. 
These  stories  were  printed  on  the  first  pages  of  hun- 
dreds of  newspaper  all  over  the  country,  under  scare- 
heads  of  "Dr.  Cook  Admits  Fake!"  and  "Dr.  Cook 
Makes  Plea  of  Insanity!" 

In  these  reports,  written  by  the  sub-editor,  he  gave 
himself  credit  for  the  "discovery"  of  Dr.  Cook  and  the 
securing  of  his  articles  for  Hamptons.  This  claim  for 
the  magazine  "beat"  was  as  dishonest  as  his  handling  of 
the  press  matter  for  Hamptons.  My  dealings  with  the 
magazine  were  entirely  through  Mr.  Harry,  whose 
frankness  and  fair-dealing  early  disposed  me  to  give 
my  story  to  the  publication  he  represented. 

The  widespread  dissemination  of  the  untrue  and 
cruelly  unfair  "confession"  and  "insanity-plea"  stories 
dazed  me.  I  felt  impotent,  crushed.  In  my  very 
effort  to  explain  myself  I  was  being  irretrievably  hurt. 
I  was  being  made  a  catspaw  for  magazine  and  news- 
paper sensation. 

But  misrepresentations  do  not  make  history.  The 
American  people  cannot  always  be  hoodwinked.  The 
reading  public  soon  realized  that  my  story  was  no  more 
a  confession  than  the  "Peary  Proof  Positive"  instal- 
ment in  Hampton's  had  been  the  embodiment  of  any 
real  Polar  proofs. 

Finding  that  it  was  impossible,  in  magazines  and 


556  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

newspapers,  to  tell  the  full  truth;  finding  that  what  I 
did  say  was  garbled  and  distorted,  I  concluded  to 
reserve  the  detailed  facts  for  this  book.  There  were 
truths  about  Mr.  Peary  which,  I  suppose,  no  paper 
would  have  dared  to  print.  I  have  told  them  here. 
There  were  truths  about  myself  which,  because  they 
explain  me,  the  papers,  preferring  to  attack  me,  would 
not  have  printed.  I  have  told  them  here. 

I  climbed  Mt.  McKinley,  by  my  own  efforts,  with- 
out assistance;  I  reached  the  Pole,  save  for  my  Eskimos, 
alone.  I  had  spent  no  one's  money,  lost  no  lives.  I 
claimed  my  victory  honestly;  and  as  a  man  believing  in 
himself  and  his  personal  rights,  at  a  time  when  I  was 
nervously  unstrung  and  viciously  attacked,  I  went 
away  to  rest,  rather  than  deal  in  dirty  defamation, 
alone.  At  a  time  when  the  tables  seemed  turned,  when 
the  wolves  of  the  press  were  desirous  of  rending  me,  I 
came  back  to  my  country — alone. 

I  have  now  made  my  fight ;  I  have  been  compelled 
to  extreme  measures  of  truth-telling  that  are  abhorrent 
to  me.  I  have  done  this  because,  otherwise,  people 
would  not  understand  the  facts  of  the  Polar  contro- 
versy or  why  I,  reluctant,  remained  silent  so  long.  I 
have  done  this  single-handedly.  I  have  confidence  in 
my  people;  more  than  that,  I  have  implicit  and 
indomitable  confidence  in — Truth. 


RETROSPECT 

Returning  from  the  North,  in  September,  1909, 
while  being  honored  in  Copenhagen  for  my  success  in 
reaching  the  North  Pole,  there  came,  by  wireless  from 
Labrador,  messages  from  Robert  E.  Peary,  claiming 
the  attainment  exclusively  as  his  own,  and  declaring 
that  in  my  assertion  I  was,  in  his  vernacular,  offering 
the  world  a  "gold  brick." 

On  April  21,  1908,  I  had  reached  a  spot  which  I 
ascertained,  with  as  scientific  accuracy  as  possible,  to  be 
the  top  of  the  axis  around  which  the  world  spins — the 
North  Pole. 

On  April  6,  1909,  a  year  later,  Mr.  Peary  claimed 
to  have  reached  the  same  spot. 

To  substantiate  his  charge  of  fraud,  Peary  declared 
that  my  Eskimo  companions  had  said  I  had  been  only 
two  sleeps  from  land.  Why,  he  further  asked,  had  I 
not  taken  reputable  witnesses  with  me  on  such  a  trip  ? 

I  had  taken,  on  my  final  dash,  two  expert  Eskimos. 
Mr.  Peary  had  four  Eskimos  and  a  negro  body  servant. 

Before  launching  further  charges,  Mr.  Peary  de- 
layed his  ship,  the  Roosevelt,  at  Battle  Harbor,  on  the 
pretext  of  cleaning  it,  that  he  might  digest  my  New 
York  Herald  story,  compare  it  with  his  own,  and  fabri- 
cate his  broadside  of  abuse.  There  he  was  in  constant 
communication  with  the  New  York  Times,  General 
Thomas  Hubbard — president  of  the  Peary  Arctic  Club 
and  financial  sponsor  of  the  "trust" — and  Herbert  L. 
Bridgman.  The  Times,. eager  to  "beat"  the  Herald, 


558  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

was  desirous  of  descrediting  me  and  launching  Peary's 
as  the  bona-fide  North  Pole  discovery  story.  General 
Hubbard,  Mr.  Bridgman,  and  the  "trust"  were  eager 
for  a  publicity  and  acclaim  greater  than  that  which 
might  attach  to  any  honorable  second  victor.  Dishonor 
and  perjury,  to  secure  first  honors,  were  riot  even  to  be 
weighed  in  the  balance. 

When  I  arrived  in  New  York,  I  was  confronted 
by  a  series  of  technical  questions,  designed  to  baffle  me. 
These  questions,  I  learned,  had  been  sent  to  the  Times 
by  Mr.  Peary  with  instructions  that  the  Times  "get 
after"  me. 

I  answered  these  questions.  I  had  answered  them 
in  Europe.  Mr.  Peary,  when  he  arrived  at  Sydney, 
and  afterward,  refused  to  answer  any  questions.  He 
continued  simply  to  attack  me,  to  make  insinuations 
aspersing  my  honesty,  playing  the  secret  back-hand 
game*  of  defamation  conducted  by  his  friends  of  his 
Arctic  Club. 

Why  had  I  not,  on  my  return  from  my  Polar  trip, 
told  anyone  of  the  achievement,  Mr.  Peary  asked  in  an 
interview,  aiming  to  show  that  my  Polar  attainment 
was  an  afterthought. 

On  my  return  to  Etah  I  had  told  Harry  Whitney 
and  Pritchard.  They,  in  turn,  told  Captain  Bob 
Bartlett.  Captain  Bartlett,  as  well  as  the  Eskimos, 
in  turn  told  Peary  at  Etah  that  I  claimed  to  have 
reached  the  Pole.  At  the  very  moment  when  this 
charge  was  made,  Peary  had  in  his  pocket  Captain 
Adams'  letter  which  gave  the  same  information.  Why 
did  Mr.  Peary  suppress  this  information,  convicting 
himself  of  insinuating  an  untruth  from  three  different 


RETROSPECT  559 

sources  to  challenge  my  claim.  Returning  from  the 
North  with  the  negro,  Henson,  and  Eskimos,  Mr. 
Peary  himself  had  not  told  his  own  companions  on  the 
Roosevelt  of  his  own  success.  Why  was  this? 

In  a  portentous  statement  Mr.  Peary  and  his  party 
declared  my  Eskimos  said  I  had  not  been  more  than 
two  sleeps  from  land. 

I  had  instructed  my  companions  not  to  tell  Peary 
of  my  achievement.  He  had  stolen  my  supplies.  I  felt 
him  unworthy  of  the  confidence  of  a  brother  explorer. 
I  had  encouraged  the  delusion  of  E-tuk-i-shook  and 
Ah-we-lah  that  almost  daily  mirages  and  low-lying 
clouds  were  signs  of  land,  so  as  to  prevent  the  native 
panic  and  desertion  on  the  circumpolar  sea.  They 
had  possibly  told  this  to  Peary  in  all  honesty;  but  other 
natives  also  told  him  that  we  had  reached  the  "Big 
Nail." 

Why  was  the  news  to  Mr.  Peary's  liking  given, 
while  that  which  he  did  not  like  was  ignored? 

Not  long  ago,  Matthew  Henson,  interviewed  in  the 
south,  was  quoted  as  saying  that  Peary  did  not  get  to 
the  Pole.  In  another  interview  he  said  that  Peary, 
like  a  tenderfoot,  rode  in  a  fur-cushioned  sledge 
until  they  got  to  a  place  which  was  "far  enough."  I 
still  prefer  to  believe  Peary  rather  than  Henson. 
Peary's  Eskimo  companions  of  a  former  trip  positively 
deny  Peary's  claimed  discovery  of  Crocker  Land.  I 
still  prefer  to  believe  that  Crocker  Land  does  deserve  a 
place  on  the  map.  Peary's  last  Eskimo  companions 
say  that  he  did  not  reach  the  Pole.  But  I  prefer  to 
credit  his  claim.  Mr.  Peary's  spirit  has  never  been  that 
of  fairness  to  others  when  a  claim  impignes  upon  his 


560  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

own.  He  has  always  adopted  the  tactics  of  the  claim- 
jumper. 

In  a  like  manner,  and  with  similar  intent,  Mr. 
Peary  had  attacked  many  explorers  before  me.  To 
prevent  his  companions  from  profiting  by  their  own 
work,  members  of  each  expedition  were  forced  to  sign 
contracts  that  barred  press  interviews,  eliminated  cam- 
eras, prohibited  lecturing  or  writing,  or  even  trading  for 
trophies.  To  insure  Mr.  Peary  all  the  honor,  his  men 
were  made  slaves  to  his  cause. 

In  a  quarrel  which  resulted  from  these  impossible 
conditions*  Eivind  Astrup  was  assailed.  Broken- 
hearted, he  committed  suicide.  Captain  Otto  Sverdrup 
was  made  to  feel  the  sting  of  the  same  grasping  spirit. 
General  A.  W.  Greely  has  been  unjustly  attacked. 
All  of  this  detestable  selfishness  culminated  in  the  treat- 
ment of  Captain  Bob  Bartlett.  When  the  Pole,  to 
Peary,  seemed  within  reach,  and  the  glory  of  victory 
was  within  grasp,  the  ever-faithful  Bartlett  was  turned 
back  and  his  place  was  taken  by  a  negro,  that  Peary 
might  be,  to  quote  his  own  words,  "the  only  white  man 
at  the  Pole." 

When,  on  my  return  to  New  York,  I  found  myself 
attacked  by  a  man  of  this  caliber,  I  decided  that  the 
public,  without  any  counter-defamation  on  my  part, 
would  read  him  aright  and  see  through  the  unscrupulous 
and  dishonest  campaign.  So  I  remained  silent. 

Coming  down  to  Portland  from  Sydney,  where  he 
had  landed,  Mr.  Peary  gave  out  an  interview  insinuating 
that  I  had  had  no  instruments  with  which  to  take 
observations.  "Would  Dr.  Cook,"  he  asked,  "if  he  had 
had  instruments,  have  left  them  in  the  hands  of  a  stran- 


RETROSPECT  561 

ger  (Harry  Whitney),  when  upon  these  depended  his 
fame  or  his  dishonor?" 

On  his  return  to  this  country,  Mr.  Whitney  cor- 
roborated my  statement  of  leaving  my  instruments  with 
him.  Mr.  Peary's  own  captain,  who  had  cross-ques- 
tioned my  Eskimos  for  Mr.  Peary,  later  stated  to  two 
magazine  editors  that  my  companions  had  described  to 
him  the  instruments  I  had  had.  Is  it  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  Mr.  Peary  did  not  know  of  this  ?  I  know 
that  he  knew.  If  he  is  an  honest  man,  why  did  he  stoop 
to  this  dishonesty?  Even  if  he  believed  me  to  be  dis- 
honest, dishonest  methods  only  placed  him  in  the  class 
of  the  one  he  attacked  as  dishonest. 

By  using  the  same  underhand  methods,  as  when  he 
got  the  New  York  Times  to  cross-question  me  for  him- 
self, Peary  now  got  his  friends  of  the  Geographic 
Society,  who  had  boosted  him,  to  call  for  "proofs." 
Such  proofs,  it  appeared,  should  always  be  presented 
before  public  honors  were  accepted  or  the  returns  of  a 
lecture  tour  considered.  But  Peary  had  engaged  in 
exploration  for  twenty  years,  and  had  always  given 
lectures  at  once,  without  ever  offering  proofs.  I  was 
asked  to  cancel  lecture  engagements  and  furnish  what 
Peary  knew  neither  he  nor  anybody  else  could  furnish 
offhand.  For  the  proof  of  an  explorer's  doings  is  his 
final  book,  which  requires  months  and  years  to  prepare. 

With  much  blaring  of  trumpets,  the  Peary 
"proofs"  were  submitted  to  his  friends  of  the  National 
Ge@graphic  Society.  With  but  a  casual  examination 
©f  copies  of  data,  claimed  at  the  time  to  be  original  field 
notes,  with  no  explanation  of  the  wonderful  instruments 
upon  which  it  had  been  earlier  claimed  Polar  honors 


562  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

rested,  an  immediate  and  favorable  verdict  was  ren- 
dered. 

A  huge  picture  was  published,  showing  learned, 
bewhiskered  gentlemen  examining  the  Peary  "proofs," 
and  reaching  their  verdict.  Mr.  Peary's  case  for  a 
rediscovery  of  the  Pole  was  won — for  the  time.  The 
public  were  deceived  into  believing  that  positive  proofs 
had  been  presented ;  that  the  society,  acting  as  a  compe- 
tent and  neutral  jury,  was  honest.  Later  it  was  shown 
that  its  members  were  financially  interested  in  Mr. 
Peary's  expedition,  and  still  later  it  was  admitted  that 
the  Peary  proofs  contained  no  proof.  All  of  this  later 
development  has  had  no  publicity. 

In  the  meantime,  I  was  attacked  for  delay.  My 
data  was  finally  sent  to  the  University  of  Copenhagen. 
A  verdict  of  "Unproven"  was  rendered. 

Thereupon,  Mr.  Peary  and  his  friends  at  once 
shouted  "Fraud!"  The  press  parrot-like  re-echoed  that 
shout.  With  this  unfair  insinuation  there  came  to  me 
the  biting  sting  of  a  burning  electric  shock  as  the  wires 
quivered  all  around  the  world.  At  the  Congressional 
investigation,  a  year  later,  the  Peary  data  was  shown  to 
be  useless  as  proof.  It  was  a  verdict  precisely  like  that 
of  Copenhagen  on  mine,  but  the  press  did  not  print  it. 
Did  the  Peary  interests  have  any  control  over  the 
American  press  or  its  sources  of  news  distribution? 

After  the  call  for  "proof"  came  charges,  from 
members  of  the  Peary  cabal,  that  I  was  unable  to  take 
observations.  Mr.  Peary  was  so  much  better  equipped 
than  I  to  do  so!  Moreover,  he  had  had  the  able  scien- 
tific assistance  of  Bartlett  and — the  negro. 

When  I  was  at  the  Pole  the  sun  was  12°  above  the 


RETROSPECT  563 

horizon.  At  the  time  Peary  claims  he  was  there  it  was 
less  than  7°.  Difficult  as  it  is  to  take  observations  at  12°, 
because  of  refracted  light,  any  accurate  observation  at 
7°  is  impossible.  It  is  indeed,  questionable  if  an  obser- 
vation could  be  made  at  all  at  the  time  when  Peary 
claims  to  have  been  at  the  Pole. 

Finding  that,  despite  all  charges,  the  public  be- 
lived  in  me,  Mr.  Peary,  through  his  cooperators, 
attempted  to  discredit  my  veracity.  An  affidavit,  which 
was  bought,  as  I  have  evidence  to  prove,  was  made  by 
Barrill  to  the  effect  that  I  had  not  climbed  Mt. 
McKinley.  The  getting  of  this  affidavit  is  placed  at 
the  door  of  Mr.  Peary. 

Do  honest  men,  with  honest  intentions,  buy  per- 
jured documents? 

Do  honest  men,  believing  in  themselves,  besmirch 
their  own  honor  by  deliberate  lying? 

Dunkle  and  Loose  came  to  me,  offered  to  look  over 
the  observations  in  my  Herald  story,  and — suddenly — 
to  my  amazement — offered  a  set  of  faked  observations, 
manufactured  at  the  instigation  of  someone.  I  re- 
fused the  batch  of  faked  papers,  and  turned. the  two 
nefarious  conspirators  out  of  my  hotel. 

A  comparison  of  my  Copenhagen  report  with  the 
Dunkle  perjured  story,  later  printed  in  the  New  York 
Times,  proves  I  used  not  one  of  their  figures. 
Mr.  R.  J.  McLouglin  later  proved  that  the  hand 
which  signed  "Dunkle"  also  signed  "Loose"  to  that 
lying  document.  It  is,  therefore,  not  only  a  perjury, 
but  a  forgery. 

Recently,  Professor  J.  H.  Gore,  a  member  of  the 
National  Geographic  Society,  and  one  of  Peary's 


564  MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 

friends,  acknowledged  to  Evelyn  B.  Baldwin  that  he 
had  in  his  possession  the  faked  observations  which  were 
made  by  Dunkle  and  Loose. 

How  did  he  come  by  them?  Why  does  he  have 
them?  What  were  the  relations  between  Dunkle  and 
Loose,  Peary's  friends,  the  New  York  Times,  and  the 
National  Geographic  Society?  Do  honest  men,  with 
honest  intentions,  conspire  with  men  of  this  sort,  men 
who  offered  to  sell  me  faked  figures — mos'c  likely  to 
betray  me  had  I  been  dishonest  enough  to  buy  them— 
and  who,  failing,  perjured  themselves? 

Disgusted,  I  decided  to  let  my  enemies  exhaust 
their  abuse.  I  knew  it  eventually  would  rebound.  De- 
termined to  retire  to  rest,  to  resolve  my  case  in  quietude 
and  secrecy,  I  left  America.  My  enemies  gleefully  pro- 
claimed this  an  admission  of  imposture. 

Yet,  after  they  had  turned  almost  every  news- 
paper in  the  country  against  me,  having  rested,  having 
resolved  my  case,  having  secured  damaging  proofs  of 
the  facts  of  the  conspiracy  against  me,  I  returned  to 
America. 

Realizing  my  error  in  so  long  remaining  silent; 
realizing  the  power  of  a  sensation-seeking  press,  which 
has  no  respect  for  individuals  or  of  truth,  I  determined, 
painful  as  would  be  the  task,  to  tell  the  unpleasant, 
distasteful  truth  about  the  man  who  tried  to  besmirch 
my  name.  This  may  seem  unkind.  But  I  was  kind  too 
long.  Truth  is  often  unpleasant,  but  it  is  less  mali- 
cious than  the  sort  of  lies  hurled  at  me. 

After  I  had  left  America,  the  newspapers,  desir- 
ous of  sensation,  had  played  into  the  hands  of  those 
who,  with  seeming  triumph,  assailed  me.  But  mean- 


RETROSPECT  565 

while,  however,  I  was  taking  advantage  of  the  oppor- 
tunity to  rest  and  gain  an  accurate  perspective  of  the 
situation.  I  thought  out  my  case,  considered  it  pro 
and  con,  puzzled  out  the  reasons  for,  and  the  source  of, 
the  newspaper  clamor  against  me.  Through  friends  in 
America  who  worked  quietly  and  effectively,  I  secured 
evidence,  which  is  embodied  in  affidavits,  which  laid 
bare  the  methods  employed  to  discredit  me  in  the  Mt. 
McKinley  affair.  I  learned  of  the  methods  used,  and 
just  what  charges  were  made,  to  discredit  my  Polar 
claim.  Damaging  admissions  were  secured  concerning 
Mr.  Peary's  fabricated  attacks  from  the  mouths  of  Mr. 
Peary's  own  associates.  Knowing  these  facts,  at  the 
proper  time,  I  returned  to  my  native  country  to  con- 
front my  enemies.  I  have  proceeded  in  detail  to  state 
my  case  and  reveal  the  hitherto  unknown  inside  facts 
of  the  entire  Polar  controversy.  I  have  stated  certain 
facts  before  the  public.  Neither  Mr.  Peary  nor  his 
friends  have  replied.  One  point  in  the  Polar  contro- 
versy has  never  reached  the  public.  Both  Mr.  Peary 
and  many  of  his  friends  asserted  that  I  left  the  country 
just  in  time  to  escape  criminal  prosecution.  They  said 
the  charge  was  to  be  that  I  had  obtained  money  on  a 
false  pretence  by  accepting  fees  for  lecturing  on  my  dis- 
covery. I  returned  to  America.  I  have  been  lecturing 
for  fees  on  my  discovery  since;  I  have  not  yet  been 
prosecuted. 

Were  Mr.  Peary  not  the  sort  of  man  who  would 
stoop  to  dishonor,  to  discredit  a  rival  in  order  to  gain 
an  unfair  advantage  for  himself,  were  he  not  guilty 
of  the  gross  injustice  I  have  stated,  he  would  have  had 
all  the  opportunity  in  the  world  for  effectively 


566 


MY  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 


coming  back  at  me.    But  he  has  remained  silent.    Why  ? 

I  have,  as  I  have  said,  absolute  confidence  in  the 
good  sense,  spirit  of  fair-play,  and  ability  of  reasoning 
judgment  of  my  people.  My  case  rests,  not  with  any 
body  of  armchair  explorers  or  kitchen  geographers,  but 
with  Arctic  travelers  who  can  see  beyond  the  mist  of 
selfish  interests,  and  with  my  fellow-countrymen,  who 
breathe  normal  air  and  view  without  bias  the  large  open 
fields  of  honest  human  endeavor. 

In  this  book  I  have  stated  my  case,  presented  my 
proofs.  As  to  the  relative  merits  of  my  claim,  and  Mr. 
Peary's,  place  the  two  records  side  by  side.  Compare 
them.  I  shall  be  satisfied  with  your  decision. 

FREDERICK  A.  COOK. 


APPENDIX 


COPY  OF  THE  FIELD  NOTES 


The  following  copy  of  the  daily  entries  in  one  of  my 
original  note-books  takes  the  expedition  step  by  step  from 
Svartevoeg  to  the  Pole  and  back  to  land. 

As  will  be  seen  by  those  here  reproduced,  the  original 
notes  are  mostly  abbreviations  and  suggestions,  hasty  tabula- 
tions and  reminders,  memoranda  to  be  later  elaborated.  The 
hard  environment,  the  scarcity  of  materials,  and  cold  fingers 
did  not  encourage  extensive  field  notes.  Most  of  these  field 
notes  were  rewritten  while  in  Jones  Sound,  and  some  were  also 
copied  and  elaborated  in  Greenland. 

In  planning  this  expedition,  every  article  of  equipment 
and  every  phase  of  effort  was  made  subordinate  to  the  one 
great  need  of  covering  long  distances.  We  deliberately  set 
out  for  the  Pole,  with  a  desperate  resolution  to  succeed,  and 
although  appreciating  the  value  of  detail  scientific  work,  I 
realized  that  such  work  could  not  be  undertaken  in  a  pioneer 
project  like  ours.  We  therefore  did  not  burden  ourselves 
with  cumbersome  instruments,  nor  did  we  allow  ourselves  to  be 
side-tracked  in  attractive  scientific  pursuits.  Elaborate 
results  are  not  claimed,  but  the  usual  data  of  Arctic  expedi- 
tions were  gathered  with  fair  success. 

(Notes  usually  written  at  end  of  day's  march.) 


Q 

Miles 
Covered. 

OBSERVATIONS,  ETC. 
(Exact  copy  from  original  Field  Papers) 

March 
1908. 

18 

26 

Svartevoeg.     Made  cache  here   for  return.     Supporting 
party  goes  back.     Noon  start;  4  men,  46  dogs,  4  sleds; 
26  miles.     Ice  heavy,  wavy;  little  snow;  crystals  hard; 
land  screened  by  drift.     Camp  on  old  field/    Night  un- 
comfortable;   air    humid,    penetrating.      Snowhouse    of 
hard    snow    imperfectly    made.      (Other    notes    of    this 
date  so  dim  that  they  cannot  be  read.    Compass  direc- 
tions, unless  otherwise  noted,  are  true.) 

570 


APPENDIX 


OBSERVATIONS,   ETC. 
(Exact  copy  from  original  Field   Papers) 


March 
1908. 


19 


20 


21 


22 


23 


25 


2T 


16 


29 


17 


18 


18 


17 


16 


Clearer,  overland  thick;  — 56°  F.;  Wind  2  W.;  sun 
feeble;  blue  haze.  On  march,  ice  smaller;  use  of  axe; 
crossings  troublesome.  Camp  lee  of  big  hummock. 
Cannot  send  supply  back;  must  follow  for  another  day. 

Land  more  clearly  visible;  sky  overcast;  wind  W.  S.  W. 
1;  ice  worse.  Small  igloo.  The  last  feed  men  return. 

Awoke,  sun  N.  E.;  orange  glow;  —63°  F.;  bar.  30.10, 
steady;  no  clouds;  sky  pale  purple.  More  snow  (on 
ice);  groaning  sledges;  mirages,  lands,  mountains,  vol- 
canoes. Air  light;  wind  sky  N. ;  Grant  Land  a  mere 
line;  — 46°.  Torture  of  light  snow;  march  14  hours. 

A.  M.;  wind  E.  3;  — 59°.  Start  12  (noon) ;  sky  clearer; 
wind  2;  water  sky  N.  Grant  Land  visible  P.  M. 
(Later)  Temp,  rose  to  — 16°.  Wind  tolerably  high; 
pressure  lines;  the  big  lead.  Camp  on  old  field  on 
bank;  ice  noises;  search  for  the  crossing.  Young, 
elastic  ice. 

Cross  the  big  lead.  Young  ice  elastic  and  dangerous; 
western  sky  again  threatening;  ice  movement  east; 
fields  small;  narrow  open  lanes.  Course  for  85th  on 
97th;  —40°;  march  11  hours;  23  miles,  credit  17  miles. 
Ice  noises;  night  beautiful;  sun  sank  into  pearly  haze. 
(Later)  Orange  glow;  pack  violet  and  pale  purple 
blue;  sky  late — partly  cl.  appearance  of  land  W. 

Observations  83.31—96.27;  — 41°;  bar.  29.70.  West 
bank  of  fog  and  haze.  Start  afternoon;  no  life;  old 
seal  hole  and  bear  tracks;  long  march;  ice  improving. 
10  h.;  pedometer  21  m.;  camp  in  coming  storm;  rush- 
ing clouds;  signs  of  land  W.  18  m.  (credited  on 
course). 

Early  awakened  by  dogs.  Storm  spent  soon;  sunrise 
temp.  — 26°,  later  — 41°;  west  again  smoky.  Back  to 
the  bags;  cracking  ice;  the  breaking  and  separating 
ice  and  the  crevasse  episode;  in  a  bag  and  in  water; 
ice-water  and  pemmican;  masks  of  ice.  Good  march 
over  newly-fractured  ice;  ice  in  motion. 

Still  windy;  some  drift  snow;  another  storm  threaten- 
ing. How  we  need  rest !  Strong  wind  during  the 
night.  Position  D.  R.  84.24—96.53. 

In  camp  until  noon.  Strong  winds  all  night;  eased  at 
noon;  clearing  some;  sun;  weather  unsettled.  Short 
run;  squally  en  route;  made  early  camp.  Bar.  29.05. 


APPENDIX 


571 


OBSERVATIONS,  ETC. 
(Exact  copy  from  original  Field  Papers) 


March 
1908. 


28 


30 


31- 


April 
1908. 


10 


10 


18 


10 


14 


14 


14 


Weather  still  unsettled.  Temp.  —41°;  Bar.  29.15;  west 
ugly.  No  progress.  The  drift.  In  camp.  Anxious 
about  stability  of  igloo.  The  collapsed  camp.  Mid- 
night; north  cloudy,  but  ice  bright;  many  hummocks. 

Start  early  P.  M.  A  little  blue  in  the  west;  sun  bursts; 
pack  disturbed;  hard  traveling,  due  to  fresh  crevasses. 
Camp  midnight;  only  9  miles. 

Land,  9  A.  M.,  cleared;  land  was  seen;  westerly  clouds 
settled  over  it.  Observations  84.50,  95.36;  bearing  of 
land,  southern  group,  West  by  South  to  West  by  North 
true.  Other  bearings  taken  later  place  a  coast  line 
along  the  102  meridian  from  lat.  84°  20'  to  85°  10'.  There 
must  be  much  open  water  about  the  land,  for  banks  of 
vapor  persistently  hide  part.  A  low  fog  persistent; 
cannot  see  shore;  for  days  we  have  expected  to  see 
something  W.,  but  never  a  clear  horizon.  Probably  two 
island  S.  like  Heiberg,  1,800  ft.  high,  valleys,  moun- 
tains, snow  N.,  table  1,000,  thin  ice  sheet,  bright  nights. 
From  observation  paper:  Bar.  30.10,  had  risen  from 
29.50  in  2  hours;  wind  2-3  mag.  S.;  clouds  mist,  East, 
water-bands  W.;  shadow  (of  6  ft.  pole)  39  ft. 

Land  screened  by  mist;  wind  W.  2-0.  Ice  fracture;  no 
sign  of  life  —  none  since  83. 

(Time  of  traveling)  9  to  6;  ice  better;  fields  larger; 
crevasses  less  troublesome;  temp.  —  32°.  There  is  no 
more  darkness  at  night. 

(Start)  9.30;  (stop)  8.  Smooth  ice;  hard  snow;  ice  28 
ft.  and  32.  Night  bright  but  cloudy.  Temp.  —35°; 
bar.  30.10;  leads  difficult. 

8.30  to  6.30.  Temp.  —39°;  bar.  30.12;  sky  clearing  at 
noon,  but  low  clouds  and  frosty  haze  persist  in  the  W. 
and  N.  Night  bright;  sun  at  midnight  under  cloud  and 
haze. 

8.45  to  6.10.  Snow  softer;  used  snowshoes;  have 
crossed  11  crevasses;  much  chopping;  brash  and  small 
hummocks. 

9  (A.M.)  to  5.45  (P.M.).  Snow  better.  Ice  larger. 
Oh,  so  tired!  Snowshoes. 


8.10  (A.M.)  to  6.15  (P.M.). 
Few  hummocks.  Less  wavy. 
faces. 


Snow    hard.    Ice 
Snow      (shoes). 


flat. 
Sun 


572 


APPENDIX 


ll 


OBSERVATIONS,  ETC. 
(Exact  copy  from  original  Field  Papers) 


April 
1908. 


10 


11 


12 


13 


14 


15 


16 


14 


IS 


15 


21 


17 


14 


15 


11  to  10.  Beautiful  clear  weather;  even  the  night  sky 
clear.  Midnight  sun  first  seen.  Ice  36  ft.  (thick). 
(Another  measurement  gave  21  feet.) 

Observation  before  starting,  86.36,  94.2.  In  spite  of 
what  seemed  like  long  marches  we  made  only  106  miles 
in  9  days.  Much  distance  lost  in  crossings.  (From 
field  paper)  bar.  29.50,  rising;  temp.  — 37°;  wind  mag. 
N.  E.,  2;  clouds  St.  3;  shadow  (6  ft.  pole),  32  feet. 

9  A.  M.  to  5.30  P.  M.;  snow  hard;  ice  about  the  same; 
wind  cutting;  frost  bites.     Clothes  humid. 

10  P.   M.   to   7   A.   M.     Working  hours   changed;   big 
marches  and  long  hours  no  longer  possible;  snow  good; 
ice  steadily  improving;  bodily  fatigue  much   felt;  wind 
1—28  W. 

10.30  to  8  A.  M.  Observation  end  of  March,  87.20,  95.19; 
the  pack  disturbance  of  B.  Ld.  lost;  farthest  north; 
little  crushed  ice;  old  floes  less  irregular;  anxious  about 
food;  wind  3  W.  (true);  300  miles  in  24  days;  work 
intermittent;  too  tired  to  read  instruments.  (From 
other  field  notes,  Temp.  — 39°;  bar.  29.90°.) 

11  P.    M.    to    7    A.    M.      Thoughts    of   return.      Food 
supply  reduced.     Hope  to  economize  in  warmer  weather. 
Very  heavy  ice.    Much  like  land  ice.    Wind  2  W.  S.  W. 
The  awful  monotony ! 

12  P.  M.  to  7  A.  M.     The  same  heavy  glacier-like  ice. 

The  occasional  soup. 

Hummocks  15-20  ft.  Ahwelah  in  tears  at  start.  W. 
black.  Sun  under  rushing  vapors.  Ice  changes.  Leads. 

11  P.  M.  to  7.10  A.  M.  88.21,  95.52.  Wind  light  but 
penetrating.  Off  the  big  field,  ice  smaller.  Some  open 
leads.  Little  sign  of  pressure.  Snow  soft,  but  less 
precipitation.  Dogs  get  up  better  speed.  100  miles 
from  Pole.  (From  other  observation  papers:  Bar.  29.90, 
falling;  temp.,  — 44°;  shadow  (6  ft.  pole)  S0y2  feet.) 

10  P.  M.  to  7  A.  M.  Ice  same.  Wind  —1,  S.  W.  Work- 
ing to  the  limit  of  muscle  capacity.  So  tired  and  weary 
of  the  never  ceasing  tread! 

10.30  to  8  A.  M.  Ice  passed.  Several  heavy  old  floes. 
Made  6  crossings.  Wind  1—3,  W.  S.  W. 


APPENDIX 


573 


OBSERVATIONS,  ETC. 
(Exact  copy  from  original  Field  Papers) 


April 
1908. 


17 


18 


19 


20 


21 


13 


16 


10.15  to  8  A.  M.  Ice  same.  Crevasses  new.  7  cross- 
ings. Saw  several  big  hummocks.  Ice  less  trouble- 
some. Temp.,  — 40°;  bar.,  30.00.  Sled  friction  less. 

9  P.  M.  to  6.  Ice,  though  broken,  smooth.  The  horizon 
line  not  so  irregular  as  that  of  more  S.  ice.  Skv  and 
ice  of  a  dark  purple  blue.  (Bar.  30.02.) 

11  P.  M.  to  8  A.  M.  (Position)  89.31.  D.  R.  94.03. 
Camp  on  an  old  field — the  only  one  on  the  horizon  with 
big  hummocks.  Ice  in  very  large  fields;  surface  less 
irregular,  but  in  other  respects  not  different  from  farther 
S.  Eskimos  told  that  in  two  average  marches  Pole 
would  be  reached.  Extra  rations  served.  Camp  in  tent. 
(Bar.,  29.98;  Temp.,  — 46°.) 

8  P.  M.  to  4  A.  M.  An  exciting  run;  ice  aglow  in 
purple  and  gold;  Eskimos  chanting.  Wind,  S.  1  89;  46.45. 
(D.  R.)  94.52.  New  enthusiasm;  good  march.  Temp., 
— 36°;  bar.  (not  legible  on  notes);  course  set  for  97th. 

1  A.  M.  to  9  A.  M.  Observations  noon:  89;  59.45;  ped. 
14.  Camp;  sleep  in  tent  short  time;  after  observations 
advance;  pitch  tent;  (also)  made  camp — snow — pre- 
pared for  two  rounds  of  observations.  Temp.,  37.7°; 
bar.,  29.83.  Nothing  wonderful;  no  Pole;  a  sea  of 
unknown  depth;  ice  more  active;  new  cracks;  open 
leads;  but  surface  like  farther  south.  Overjoyed  but 
find  no  words  to  express  pleasure.  So  tired  and  weary! 
How  we  need  a  rest!  12,  night.  Sun  seems  as  high  as 
at  noon,  but  in  reality  is  a  little  higher,  owing  to  its 
spiral  ascent.  The  mental  el-ation — the  drying  of  furs, 
and  (making)  photos — Eskimos'  ideas  and  disappoint- 
ment of  no  Pole — thoughts  of  home  and  its  cheer.  But 
oh,  such  monotony  of  sky,  wind  and  ice!  The  dangers 
of  getting  back.  (From  other  observation  papers: 
Temp,  ranged  from  — 36°  by  mercury  thermometer  to 
—39°  by  spirit  thermometer;  clouds  Alt.  St.,  1;  wind 
mag.  S.,  1;  ice  blink  E.;  water  sky,  W.;  shadow  (of  6 
ft.  pole)  28  feet.) 

Moved  camp  4  m.  magnetic  S.  Made  4  observations  for 
altitude;  S.  at  noon,  W.  at  6,  N.  at  12M,  E.  at  6  A.  M. 
Ice  same;  more  open  water;  wind  2-3;  temp.,  — tl°; 
(from  field  paper)  W.  S.  W.,  1  to  2.  There  are  only 
two  big  hummocks  in  sight.  (Made  a  series  of  observa- 
tions for  the  sun's  altitude,  2  on  the  21st  at  the  first 
camp,  4  on  the  22nd  at  W.  M.  camp,  and  another  mid- 
night 22-23.  Before  we  left  deposited  tube.) 


574 


APPENDIX 


OBSERVATIONS,   ETC. 
(Exact  copy  from  original   Field   Papers) 


April 
1908. 


24 


25 


26 


27 


29 


30 


May 
1908. 


20 


16 


15 


14 


14 


14 


13 


15 


18 


13 


14 


Start  for  home.  12.30  to  noon.  Fairly  clear — ice 
smooth,  but  many  new  crevasses.  Temp.,  —41°.  Course 
for  100  mer. 

11  P.  M.  to  9  A.  M.  These  records,  being  made  at  the 
end  of  the  day's  journey,  give  the  doings  of  the  day 
previous — this  note  for  the  24th  is  in  reality  written  on 
the  morning  of  the  25th,  when  comfortable  in  camp. 
Wind  1-2  W.  Temp.,  —36°.  Ice  smooth— fields  larger; 
5  crossings;  the  pleasure  of  facing  home. 

8-8.  Temp.,  —37°;  Wind  1-2  W.  S.  W.;  ice  same.  The 
worry  of  ice  breaking  up  for  me,  signs  of  joy  for  the 
Eskimo. 

9  to  7.  Still  much  worried  about  return;  possibility  of 
ice  disruption  and  open  water  near  land;  wind  light; 
ice  shows  new  cracks,  but  few  have  opened;  seems  to 
be  little  pressure;  few  hummocks;  snow  hard  and  travel- 
ing all  that  could  be  desired. 

9.30  to  8.  Ice  same;  wind  S.  E.  1;  good  going;  cross- 
ings not  troublesome;  dogs  in  good  spirits;  Eskimos 
happy;  but  all  very  tired.  Temp.,  — 40°. 

9.15  to  7.45.  Ice  same;  wind  1  W.;  snow  moderately 
hard;  few  hummocks  and  no  pressure  lines. 

Midnight  to  8.45  A.  M.  Ice  more  active;  fresh  cracks; 
some  open  cracks  but  no  leads.  Wind  1  S. 

Midnight  to  8  A.  M.  Ped.  registered  121  m.  from  Pole; 
camp  by  D.  R.,  87.59—100;  observations  88.01,  97.42. 
Course  half  point  more  W.  Temp.,  — 34°.  Start  more 
westerly. 

12.30  to  9  A.  M.  Much  color  to  the  sunbursts,  but  the 
air  humid;  the  temperature  persistently  near  — 40°,  but 
considerable  range  with  the  direction  of  the  light  winds 
and  mists  when  they  come  over  leads.  Much  very  heavy 
smooth  ice — undulating,  not  hummocky  like  S. 

2  A.  M.  to  11  A.  M.    Fog,  clouds  and  wet  air.    Temp., 
— 15°.    Hard  to  strike  a  course. 

1  A.  M.  to  10  A.  M.  Thick  weather;  wind  E.  2;  ice 
friction  less;  occasional  light  snow  fall. 

3  to   11   A.  M.     Air  clear  but  sky  obscured;  ice  very 
good,  but  hummocks  appearing  on  the  horizon. 


APPENDIX 


575 


3s 


OBSERVATIONS,   ETC. 

(Exact  copy  from  original  Field   Papers) 


10 


11 


13 


13 


14 


15 


IT 


18 


19 


11 


10 


13 


13 


11 


13 


14 


11 


11 


12 


11  P.  M.  to  6  A.  M.  Strong  wind;  occasional  breathing 
spell  behind  hummocks;  squally  with  drifts. 

In  camp.  Stopped  by  signs  of  storm;  tried  to  build 
igloo  but  wind  prevented;  in  a  collapsed  tent  for  24 
hours;  eat  only  half  ration  of  pemmican. 

8  A.  M.  to  3  P.  M.  Wind  detestable;  ice  bad;  life  a 
torture;  sky  persistently  obscured;  no  observations; 
pedometer  out  of  order,  only  time  to  gauge  our  dis- 
tance. 

2  A.    M.   to    10.     Weather  bad;   windy,   S.    W.;   some 
drift;  heavy  going. 

I  to  8  A.  M.     (Weather)  thick;  wind  easier;  ice  in  big 
fields;  snow  a  little  harder,  snowshoes  steady. 

II  P.  M.  of  the  9th  to  6  A.  M.     Heavy  going  but  little 
friction  on  sled;  some  drift;  see  more  hummocks. 

May  11.  In  camp.  Strong  wind;  heavy  drift;  encircle 
tent  with  snow  blocks. 

12.30  to  8.30  A.  M.  Wind  still  strong;  cestrugi  trouble- 
some, but  temperature  moderate;  sled  loads  getting 
light. 

11  P.  M.  of  12th,  to  7.30  A.  M.  of  13th.  Wind  easier, 
S.  S.  W.;  snow  harder;  ice  very  thick  and  very  large 
fields;  fog. 

3  A.  M.  to  9  A.  M.    No  sky;  strong  wind  compelled  to 
camp  early. 

1  A.  M.  to  10.     Fog;  ice  much  crevassed;  passed  over 
several  cracks — some  opening. 

May  16.  11  P.  M.  of  the  15th  to  6  A.  M.  Cl.  10;  wind 
again  troublesome;  light  diffused,  making  it  difficult  to 
find  footing. 

2  A.    M.    to    10.     Thick;    ice   more    and   more   broken; 
smaller  and  more  cracked — cracks  give  much  trouble. 

I  A.  M.  to  9.30.    Wind  more  southerly  and  strong;  ice 
separating;  some  open  water  in  leads. 

II  P.    M.    to    7.30.     Wind    veering   east;    fog   thicker; 
ice  very  much  broken,  but  snow  surface  good. 


576 


APPENDIX 


Q 


OBSERVATIONS,  ETC. 
(Exact  copy  from  original  Field  Papers) 


May 
1908. 


20 


21 


22 


25 


26 


27 


28 


29 


30 


31 


June 
1908. 


12 


12 


11 


13 


11 


10 


11 


12 


Midnight     to     9     A. 
almost  impossible. 


M.       Open    water;    active    pack; 


11  P.  M.  to  9.     Conditions  the  same;  our  return  seems 
almost  hopeless;  no  observations — cannot  even  guess  at 
the  drift. 

In  camp.  Gale  N.  E.;  temp,  high;  air  wet;  ice  breaking 
and  grinding;  worried  about  the  ultimate  return;  food 
low. 

3  A.  M.  to  7  A.  M.  Still  squally,  but  forced  a  short 
march. 

12  noon  to  8  A.  M.  Short  clearing  at  noon;  the  first  clear 
mid-day  sky  for  a  long  time;  west  still  in  haze.     Water 
sky  W.  and  S.  W.;  no  land  in  sight — though  the  boys 
saw  the  land  later  when  I  was  asleep;  ice  much  broken. 
84°  02'— 97°  03'. 

10  P.  M.  to  6  A.  M.     Ice  better;  no  wind;  thick  fog; 
snow  hard.     Temp.,  — 10°. 

11  P.  M.  to  7.45  A.  M.     Ice  in   fields  of  about   1   M. 
somewhat  hummocky;  crossings  hard;  no  wind. 

11.30  P.  M.  to  9.30  A.  M.    Ice  same;  thick  fog. 

12  m.  night  io  10  A.  M.     Ice  still  same;  fog;  wind  3, 
shifting  E.  S.  E.  and  S.  W. 

11.30  P.  M.  to  9.30  A.  M.  As  we  came  here  the  water 
sky  in  the  southwest  to  which  we  had  aimed,  gradually 
working  west,  led  to  a  wide  open  lead,  extending  from 
north  to  south,  and  almost  before  knowing  it,  in  the 
general  plan  of  the  ice  arrangement,  we  found  ourselves 
to  the  east  of  this  lead.  Temp,  rose  to  zero.  Ice  much 
broken;  air  thick;  light  vague;  impossible  to  see  irregu- 
larities. Food  y^  rations;  and  straight  course  for  Nan- 
sen  Sound. 

12  to  11  A.  M.  Ice  in  heaps;  open  water;  brash  the 
worst  trouble;  little  fog. 

11.15  P.  M.  to  9  A.  M.  Ice  little  better;  snow  hard; 
sleds  go  easy;  much  helping  required  (over  pressure 
lines). 

10.45  to  8.  Ice  in  large  fields;  many  hummocks;  few 
heavy  fields. 


APPENDIX 


577 


•tJ 

1 

58 

OBSERVATIONS,  ETC. 

Q 

as 

(Exact  copy  from  original  Field  Papers) 

June 

2 

12 

10  P.  M.  to  9  A.  M.    Ice  steadily  improving. 

1908. 

3 

11 

10  P.  M.  to  8  A.  M.    Ice  begins  to  show  action  of  sun. 

Temperature  occasionally  above  freezing. 

4 

10 

9.30  P.  M.  to  7.30  A.  M.   Fog;  ice  offering  much  trouble, 

but  friction  little  and  load  light. 

5 

11 

9.45  P.  M.  to  7  A.  M.    Hummocks  exposed  to  sun  have 

icicles. 

6 

0 

In  camp.    Strong  N.  "W.  gale. 

7 

0 

In    camp.     Gale   continues,   with   much   snow;    the    ice 

about  breaks  up;   anxious   about   map.     (Not  knowing 

either    drift    or    position,    were    puzzled    as    to    proper 

course  to  set.) 

8 

14 

1  A.  M.  to  noon.     Ice  bad,  but  snow  hard,  and  after 

rest  progress  good;  wind  still  blowing  west. 

9 

10 

11  P.  M.  to  9  A.  M.     With  thick  ice  and  this  kind  of 

traveling  it  is  hard  to  guess  at  distances. 

10 

0 

10.30  P.  M.  to  8.    Bad  ice;  open  leads;  still  no  sun. 

11 

14 

10  P.  M.  to  8  A.  M.     Large  smooth  ice;  little  snow; 

wind  S.  W.,  1;  no  fog,  but  sky  still  of  lead. 

12 

15 

10.30   to    5.      Small    fields    but    good    going;    sky    black 

to  the  east. 

13 

14 

10  to  8  A.  M.    Fog  cleared  first  time  since  last  observa- 

tion.    Land    in    sight    south    and    east.      Heiberg    and 

Ringnes  Land;  water  sky;  small  ice;   brash  and   drift 

eastward.    We  have  been  carried  adrift  far  to  the  south 

and  west,  and  examination  of  ice  eastward  proves  that 

all  is  small  ice  and  open  water.     Heiberg  Island  is  im- 

possible to  us.     What  is  our   fate?     Food  and  fuel  is 

about   exhausted,   though   we   still   have    10   bony   dogs. 

Upon  these   and  our  little   pemmican   we  can   possibly 
survive    for   20   days.     In   the   meantime   we    must    go 

somewhere.     To  the  south  is  our  only  hope. 

NOTE.  —  June  14  and  thereafter  to  September  1,  all  notes  were  briefly 

jotted  down  in  another  diary,  a  collection  of  loose  leaves   in   which  the 

observations  of  the  return  were  made.    This  diary  was  left  with  the  instru- 

ments at  Etah  with  Mr.  Whitney.    The  data,  however,  had  been  re-written 

at  Cape  Sparbo,  so  that  the  notes  had  served  their  purpose  and  were  of 

no  further  value  when  no  pretentious  publication  was  anticipated. 

Other  notes  were  made  on  loose  sheets  of  paper  or  on  leaves  of  the 

note  books.     Many  of  these  were  destroyed,  others  were  rubbed  out  to 
make  room  for  recording  what  was  regarded  as  more  important  data,  and 
a  few  were  retained  quite  by  accident. 

QUESTIONS     THAT     ENTER     CALCULATIONS     FOR 
POSITION  OF  THE  NORTH  POLE. 

By  FREDERICK  A.  COOK. 

Much  abstruse,  semi-scientific  and  academic  material  has 
been  forced  intd  the  polar  discussions  about  proofs  by  observa- 
tion. The  problem  presented  is  full  of  interesting  points,  and 
to  elucidate  these  I  will  ask  the  reader  to  go  back  with  me  to 
that  elusive  imaginary  spot,  the  North  Pole.  Here  we  find 
no  pole — and  absolutely  nothing  to  mark  the  spot  for  hundreds 
of  miles.  We  are  in  the  center  of  a  great  moving  sea  of  ice  and 
for  500  miles  in  every  direction  it  is  the  same  hopeless  desert  of 
floating,  shifting  crystal.  I  believed  then  that  we  had  reached 
the  Pole,  and  it  never  occurred  to  me  that  there  would  be  a  cry 
for  absolute  proof.  Such  a  demand  had  never  been  presented 
before.  The  usual  data  of  the  personal  narrative  of  the  ex- 
plorers had  always  been  received  with  good  faith.  But  let  us 
reopen  the  question  and  examine  the  whole  problem. 

Is  there  any  positive  proof  for  a  problem  of  this  kind? 
Is  there  any  one  sure  shoulder  upon  which  we  can  hang  the 
mantle  of  polar  conquest?  We  are  deprived  of  the  usual  land- 
marks of  terrestrially  fixed  points.  The  effort  to  furnish  proof 
is  like  trying  to  fix  a  point  in  Mid-Atlantic.  But  here  you 
have  the  tremendous  advantage  of  known  compass  variation, 
sure  time,  reasonably  accurate  corrections.  Not  only  by  care- 
ful observation  at  sea  of  fixed  stars  and  other  astronomical 
data,  but  by  an  easy  and  quick  access  to  and  from  each  shore, 
and  by  reliable  tables  for  reductions  gathered  during  scores  of 
years  of  experience. 

All  this  is  denied  in  the  mid-polar  basins  at  the  time  when 
it  is  possible  to  arrive  there.  There  is  no  night,  there  are  no 
stars,  and  the  sun,  the  only  fixed  object  by  which  a  position 
can  be  calculated,  is  not  absolutely  fixable.  It  is  low  on  the 
horizon.  Its  rays  are  bent  in  getting  to  the  recording  instru- 
ments while  passing  through  the  thick  maze  of  floating  ice  mist. 
This  mist  always  rests  on  the  pack  even  in  clear  days.  The 
very  low  temperature  of  the  atmosphere  and  the  distorting, 


APPENDIX  579 

twisting  mirage  effect  of  different  strata  of  air,  with  radically 
different  temperatures,  wherein  each  stratum  has  a  different 
density,  carry  different  quantities  of  frosted  humidity. 

All  of  this  gives  to  the  sunbeam,  upon  which  the  calcula- 
tion for  latitude  and  longitude  is  based,  the  deceptive  appear- 
ance of  a  paddle  thrust  into  clear  water.  The  paddle  in  such 
case  seems  bent.  The  sunbeam  is  bent  in  a  like  manner,  since 
it  passes  through  an  unknown  depth  of  refractory  air 
for  the  correction  of  which  no  law  can  be  devised  until  modern 
aerial  navigation  brings  to  a  science  that  very  complex  problem 
of  the  geography  of  the  atmosphere.  For  this  reason,  and  for 
others  which  we  will  presently  show,  this  whole  idea  of  proof  by 
figures  as  devised  by  Mr.  Peary  and  the  armchair  geographers, 
falls  to  pieces. 

Let  us  take  the  noon  observation — a  fairly  certain  method 
to  determine  latitude  in  most  zones  of  the  earth  where  for 
hundreds  of  years  we  have  learned  to  make  certain  corrections, 
which  by  use  have  been  incorporated  as  laws  in  the  art  of 
navigation.  About  five  minutes  before  local  noon  the  sea  cap- 
tain goes  to  the  bridge  with  sextant  in  hand.  His  time  is 
certain,  but  even  if  it  were  not,  the  sun  rises  and  sets  and 
therefore  changes  its  altitude  quickly.  The  captain  screws  the 
sun  down  to  a  fixed  angle  on  his  sextant;  he  puts  the  instru- 
ment aside;  then  takes  it  up  again,  brings  the  sun  to  the 
horizon,  examines  his  instrument.  The  sun  has  risen  a  little 
further;  it  is  not  yet  noon.  This  is  repeated  again  and  again, 
and  at  last  the  sun  begins  to  descend.  It  is  now  local  noon. 
This  gives  a  rough  check  for  his  time.  There  is  a  certain  sure 
moment  for  his  observation  at  just  the  second  when  it  is 
accurate, — when  the  sun's  highest  ascent  has  been  reached. 
Such  advantages  are  impossible  when  nearing  the  Pole.  The 
chronometers  have  been  shooting  the  shoots  of  the  pack  for 
weeks.  The  sudden  changes  of  temperature  also  disturb  the 
mechanism,  and  therefore  time,  that  very  important  factor  upon 
which  all  astronomical  data  rest,  is  at  best  only  a  rough  guess. 
For  this  reason  alone,  if  for  no  other,  such  as  unknown  refrac- 
tion and  other  optical  illusions,  the  determination  of  longitude 
when  nearing  the  Pole  becomes  difficult  and  unreliable.  All 
concede  this,  but  latitude,  we  are  told  by  the  armchair  observer, 
is  easy  and  sure.  Let  us  see. 

The  time  nears  to  get  a  peep  of  the  sun  at  noon,  but  what 


580  APPENDIX 

is  local  noon?  The  chronometers  may  be,  and  probably  are, 
far  off.  And  there  is  no  way  to  correct  even  approximately. 
I  do  not  mean  on  hours,  but  there  may  be  unknowable  differ- 
ences of  minutes,  and  each  minute  represents  a  mile.  Let  us 
see  how  this  affects  our  noon  observation.  Five  or  ten  minutes 
before  local  noon  the  observer  levels  his  artificial  horizon  and 
with  sextant  in  hand  lies  down  on  the  snow.  A  little  drift  and 
nose  bleaching  wind  complicate  matters.  The  fingers  are  cold ; 
the  instrument  must  be  handled  with  mittens;  the  cold  is  such 
that  at  best  a  shiver  runs  up  the  spine,  the  eye  blinks  with 
snow  glitter  and  frost.  The  arms,  hands  and  legs  become  stiff 
from  cold  and  from  inaction.  He  tries  exactly  what  the  sea 
captain  does  in  comfort  on  the  bridge,  but  his  time  is  a  guess, 
he  watches  the  sun,  he  tries  to  catch  it  when  it  is  highest, 
but  this  is  about  as  difficult  as  it  is  to  catch  a  girl  in  the  act  of 
winking  when  her  back  is  turned. 

The  sun  does  not  rise  and  set  as  it  does  in  temperate 
climes — it  circles  the  horizon  day  and  night  in  a  spiral  ascent 
so  nearly  parallel  to  the  line  of  the  horizon  that  it  is  a  practical 
impossibility  to  determine  by  any  possible  means  at  hand  when 
it  is  highest.  One  may  lie  on  that  snow  for  an  hour,  and 
though  steadied  with  the  patience  of  Job,  the  absolute  deter- 
mination of  the  highest  point  of  the  sun's  altitude  or  the  local 
noon  is  almost  a  physical  impossibility. 

This  observation  is  not  accurate  and  gives  only  results  of 
use  in  connection  with  other  calculations.  These  results  at 
best  are  also  subject  to  that  unknown  allowance  for  really 
great  atmospheric  refraction.  The  geographic  student  will,  I 
am  sure,  agree  that  against  this  the  magnetic  needle  will  offer 
some  check,  for  if  you  can  be  certain  that  when  the  needle 
points  to  a  positive  direction,  then  it  is  a  simple  matter  to  get 
approximate  time  with  it  and  the  highest  noon  altitude;  but 
since  the  correction  for  the  needle,  like  that  of  latitude  and 
longitude,  is  based  on  accurate  time,  and  since  it  is  further 
influenced  by  other  local  and  general  unknown  conditions — 
therefore  even  the  compass,  that  sheet  anchor  of  the  navigator, 
is  as  uncertain  as  other  aids  to  fixing  a  position  in  the  polar 
basin. 

In  making  such  observations  an  artificial  horizon  must  be 
used.  This  offers  an  uncontrollable  element  of  inacpuracy  in  all 
Arctic  observations  when  the  sun  is  low. 


APPENDIX  581 

My  observations  were  made  with  the  sun  about  1&°  above 
the  horizon.  At  this  angle  the  image  of  the  sun  is  dragged 
over  the  glass  or  mercury  with  no  sharp  outlines,  a  mere  streak 
of  light,  and  not  a  perfect,  sharp-cut  image  of  the  sun  which 
an  important  observation  demands. 

Mr.  Peary's  altitudes  were  all  less  than  7°.  I  challenge 
any  one  to  produce  a  clear  cut  image  of  the  sun  on  an  artificial 
horizon  with  the  sun  at  that  angle.  All  such  observations 
therefore  are  unreliable  because  of  imperfect  contact,  for  which 
there  can  be  no  correction. 

The  question  of  error  by  refraction  is  one  of  very  great 
importance.  In  the  known  zones  the  accumulated  lesson  of  ages 
has  given  us  certain  tables  for  correction,  but  even  with  these 
advantages  few  navigators  would  take  an  observation  when  the 
sun  is  but  7°  above  the  horizon  and  count  it  of  any  value 
whatever. 

In  the  Arctic  the  problem  of  refraction  presents  probable 
inaccuracies,  not  of  seconds  or  minutes,  but  possibly  of  degrees. 
Every  Arctic  traveler  has  seen  in  certain  atmospheric  condi- 
tions a  dog  enlarged  to  the  image  of  a  bear.  A  raven  fre- 
quently looks  like  a  man,  and  a  hummock,  but  25  feet  high,  a 
short  distance  away,  will  at  times  rise  to  the  proportions  of  a 
mountain.  Mirages  turn  things  topsy-turvy,  and  the  whole 
polar  topography  is  distorted  by  optical  illusions.  Many  ex- 
plorers have  seen  the  returning  sun  over  a  sea  horizon  after  the 
long  night  one  or  two  days  before  the  correct  time  for  its 
reappearance.  This  gives  you  an  error  in  observations  which 
can  be  a  matter  of  60  miles. 

Here  is  a  tangle  in  optics,  which  cannot  under  the  present 
knowledge  of  conditions  be  elucidated,  and  yet  with  all  these 
disadvantages,  the  group  of  armchair  geographers  of  the  Na- 
tional Geographic  Society  pronounces  a  series  of  sun  altitudes 
less  than  7°  above  the  horizon  as  proof  positive  of  the  attain- 
ment of  the  Pole.  Furthermore  these  men  are  personal  friends 
of  Mr.  Peary,  and  the  society  for  whom  they  act  is  financially 
interested  in  the  venture  which  they  indorsed. 

Is  this  verdict  based  upon  either  science  or  justice,  or 
honor? 

In  response  to  a  public  clamor  for  a  peep  at  these  papers, 
a  more  detestable  unfairness  was  forced  on  the  public.  The 
venerable  director  of  the  Coast  and  Geodetic  Survey,  who  was 


582  APPENDIX 

one  of  Mr.  Peary's  jurors,  instead  of  showing  his  hand,  and 
thus  freeing  himself  from  a  dishonest  entanglement,  asked  his 
underlings,  H.  C.  Mitchell  and  C.  R.  Duval,  to  stoop  to  a 
dishonor  to  veil  the  humbug  previously  perpetrated.  Under 
the  instruction  of  their  chief,  the  first  figures  of  Mr.  Peary's 
sextant  readings  have  been  taken,  and  by  manipulating  these 
they  have  helped  Mr.  Peary  by  saying  that  their  calculation 
placed  Mr.  Peary  within  two  miles  of  the  Pole. 

Perhaps  Mr.  Peary  was  at  the  pin-point  of  the  Pole,  but 
when  he  allows  his  friends  to  use  questionable  methods  to  give  a 
false  security  to  his  claim,  then  his  claim  is  insecure  indeed. 

Mitchell  and  Duval  took  the  sextant  readings  at  face  value. 
If  Mr.  Peary  or  his  computers  had  frankly  admitted  the  uncer- 
tainty of  the  grounds  upon  which  these  sextant  readings  rested, 
then  one  would  be  inclined  to  grant  the  benefit  of  doubt;  but 
as  was  the  case  regarding  the  verdict  of  the  National  Geo- 
graphic Society,  the  public  was  carefully  excluded  from  a 
knowledge  of  the  shaky  grounds  upon  which  these  calculations 
are  based.  The  impossibility  of  correct  time  and  adequate 
allowance  for  refraction  render  such  figures  useless  as  proof  of 
a  position.  But  what  about  the  image  of  the  sun  upon  the 
artificial  horizon? 

An  important  observation  demands  that  this  should  be 
sharp  and  clear,  otherwise  the  observation  is  worthless.  Mitchell 
and  Duval  have  surely  thought  of  this.  Perhaps  they  have 
tried  an  experiment.  As  real  scientific  students  they  should 
have  experimented  with  the  figures  with  which  they  played.  If 
the  experiment  has  not  been  made  they  are  incompetent.  In 
either  case  a  trick  has  been  used  to  bolster  up  the  deceptive 
verdict  of  the  National  Geographic  Society. 

A  dish  of  molasses,  a  bull's  eye  lantern  and  a  dark  room  are 
all  that  is  necessary  to  prove  how  the  public  has  been  deceived 
by  men  in  the  Government  pay  as  scientific  computers.  With 
the  bull's  eye  as  the  sun,  the  molasses  or  any  other  reflecting 
surface  as  a  horizon,  with  the  light  striking  the  surface  at  less 
than  7  degrees,  as  Mr.  Peary's  sun  did,  it  will  be  found  that  the 
sun's  image  is  an  oblong  streak  of  light  with  ill-defined  edges. 
Such  an  image  cannot  be  recorded  on  a  sextant  with  sufficient 
accuracy  to  make  it  of  any  use  as  an  observation.  Mitchell  and 
Duval  must  know  this.  If  so,  they  are  dishonest,  for  they  did 
not  tell  the  public  about  it.  If  they  did  not  know  it  they  are 


APPENDIX  583 

incompetent   and   should   be    dismissed   from   the   Government 
service. 

With  all  of  these  uncertainties  a  course  which  gives  a 
workable  plan  of  action  can  be  laid  over  the  blank  charts,  but 
there  always  remains  the  feebly  guarded  mystery  of  the  ice 
drift.  When  the  course  is  set,  the  daily  run  of  distance  can  be 
checked  by  estimating  speed  and  hourly  progress  with  the 
watches.  Against  this  there  is  the  check  of  the  pedometer  or 
some  other  automatic  measure  for  distance  covered.  The  short- 
ening night  shadows  and  the  gradual  coming  to  a  place  where 
the  night  and  day  shadows  are  of  about  equal  length  is  a 
positive  conviction  to  him  who  is  open  to  self-conviction,  as  a 
polar  aspirant  is  likely  to  be.  But  frankly  and  candidly,  when 
I  now  review  one  and  all  of  these  methods  of  fixing  the  North 
Pole,  or  the  position  of  a  traveler  en  route  to  it,  I  am  bound 
to  admit  that  all  attempt  at  proof  represented  by  figures  is 
built  on  a  foundation  of  possible  and  unknowable  inaccuracy. 
Figures  may  convince  an  armchair  geographer  who  has  a  pre- 
conceived opinion,  but  to  the  true  scientist  with  the  many 
chances  for  mistakes  above  indicated  there  is  no  real  proof. 
The  verdict  on  such  data  must  always  be  "not  proven"  if  the 
evidence  rests  on  a  true  scientific  examination  of  material  which 
at  best  and  in  the  very  nature  of  things  is  not  checked  by  the 
precision  which  science  demands.  The  real  proof — if  proof  is 
possible — is  the  continuity  of  the  final  printed  book  that  gives 
all  the  data  with  the  consequent  variations. 

FROM   A   CRITICAL   REVIEW   OF    THE    POLAR    CLAIMS    IN   A 

FORTHCOMING  BOOK 
By  CAPTAIN  THOMAS  F.  HALL  of  Omaha,  Neb. 

DR.  COOK'S  VALID  CLAIM. 

Cook's  narrative  has  been  before  the  public  nearly  two  years.  It  has 
been  subject  to  the  most  minute  scrutiny  that  invention,  talent  and  money 
could  give.  It  is  to-day  absolutely  unscathed.  Not  one  item  in  it  from 
beginning  to  end  has  been  truthfully  discredited.  It  stands  unimpeached. 
Mud  enough  has  been  thrown.  Bribery  and  conspiracy  have  done  their 
worst.  A  campaign  of  infamy  has  been  waged,  and  spent  its  force;  but 
not  one  solitary  sentence  has  been  proven  wrong.  Musk-ox  fakes,  starved 
dogs,  fictitious  astronomical  or  other  calculations  may  have  some  effect  on 
popular  opinion;  but  they  have  none  on  the  actual  facts.  They  do  not 
budge  the  truth  a  hair's  breadth  and  they  do  not  make  history. 

Cook's  claim  to  the  Discovery  of  the  North  Pole  is  as  sound  and  as 
valid  as  the  other  claims  of  discovery,  or  the  achievement  of  any  one 
preceding  him  in  the  Arctic  or  the  Antarctic. 


584  APPENDIX 

VERDICT  OF  GEN.  A.  W.  GREELY,  REAR  ADMIRAL  W.  S.  SCHLEY 
AND  OTHER  ARCTIC  EXPERTS 


Dr.  Cook  is  the  discoverer  of  the  North  Pole.— GENERAL  A.  W.  GREELY. 

No  one  familiar  with  the  Polar  problem  doubts  Dr.  Cook's  success.  Peary 
never  tried  to  get  to  the  Pole.  He  copied  Cook's  data  and  then,  by  official  intrigue 
tried  to  "put  it  over."  A  study  of  Peary's  deception  on  compass  variation  will 
prove  that. — CLARK  BROWN. 

You  can  prove  the  discovery  of  Northermost  Land.  The  Eskimo  talk  is 
nonsense.  The  Polar  discussion  should  be  settled  by  an  International  Commis- 
sion— PROF.  OTTO  NORDENSKJOLD. 

Dr.  Cook  was  the  first  and  only  man  to  reach  the  North  ^ole — CHAS.  E. 

RlLLIET. 

I  have  gone  over  all  of  Dr.  Cook's  data,  and,  in  spite  of  the  statements  to 
the  contrary,  I  believe  he  reached  the  Pole. — MAURICE  CONNELL. 

It  has  always  been  my  pleasure  to  support  Dr.  Cook.  I  can  see  no  reason 
for  doubting  his  success.  Who  are  his  accusers,  surely  not  Arctic  Explorers? — 
CAPTAIN  OTTO  SVERDRUP. 

I  am  convinced  that  if  anyone  reached  the  Pole,  Dr.  Cook  got  there. — 
ANDREW  J.  STONE. 

From  first  to  last  I  have  championed  Dr.  Cook's  cause,  and  after  going 
over  the  printed  records  of  both  claimants  I  am  doubly  convinced  that  he  reached 
the  Pole. — CAPTAIN  EDWARD  A.  HAVEN. 

Dr.  Cook  reached  the  Pole,  I  doubt  Peary,  his  observations  bear  the  stamp 
of  inexcusable  inaccuracy  and  bunglesome  carelessness.  One  cannot  read  Peary's 
book  and  believe  in  him. — CAPTAIN  JOHN  MENANDER. 

Washington,  D.  C., 

Jan.  7th,  1911. 
Dear  Dr.  Cook: 

I  would  assure  you 

that  I  have  never  varied  in  the  belief  that  you  reached  the  Pole.  After  reading 
the  published  accounts,  daily  and  critically,  of  both  claimants,  I  was  forced  to 
the  conclusion  from  their  striking  similarity  that  each  of  you  was  the  eye  witness 
of  the  other's  success. 

Without  collusion  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  have  written  accounts 
so  similar,  and  yet  in  view  of  the  ungracious  controversy  that  has  occurred  since 
that  view  (collusion)  would  be  impossible  to  imagine. 

While  I  have  never  believed  that  either  of  you  got  within  a  pin-point  of  the 
Pole,  I  have  steadfastly  held  that  both  got  as  near  the  goal  as  was  possible  to 
ascertain  considering  the  imperfections  of  the  instruments  used  and  the  personal 
errors  of  individuals  under  circumstances  as  adverse  to  absolute  accuracy. 

Again  I  have  been  broad  enough  in  my  views  to  believe  that  there  was 
room  enough  at  the  Pole  for  two;  and  never  narrow  enough  to  believe  that  only 
one  man  got  there. 

I  believe  that  both  are  entitled  to  the  honor  of  the  achievement. 

Very  truly  yours, 

(Signed)        W.  S.  SCHLEY. 


POSITIVE  PROOF  OF  DR.  COOK'S  ATTAIN- 
MENT OF  THE  POLE 

BY  CAPTAIN  EVELYN  BRIGGS  BALDWIN 

METEOROLOGIST  PEARY  EXPEDITION,  1893-4,  SECOND-IN-COM- 
MAND WELLMAN  EXPEDITION  1898-9,  AND  ORGANIZER  AND 
LEADER  OF  THE  BALDWIN-ZIEGLER  POLAR  EXPEDITION, 
1901-2,  ETC. 

I  can  prove  the  truth  of  Dr.  Cook's  statements  in  regard 
to  his  discovery  of  the  North  Pole  from  Peary's  own  official 
record  of  his  last  dash  to  the  Northward. 

So  far  as  I  can  learn,  Dr.  Cook  has  never  made  a  "con- 
fession" in  regard  to  his  trip  to  the  Pole  in  the  sense  that  he 
denied  his  first  statements.  He  has  merely  said  that,  in  view  of 
the  great  difficulty  in  determining  the  exact  location  of  the 
Pole,  he  may  not  have  been  exactly  upon  the  northernmost 
pin-point  of  the  world.  Peary,  under  pressure  at  the  Congres- 
sional investigation,  was  forced  to  admit  the  same. 

For  three  hundred  years  there  has  been  a  rivalry  among 
civilized  men  to  be  the  first  to  reach  the  North  Pole.  I  believe 
that  the  honor  of  having  succeeded  in  the  attempt  should  go — 
not  to  Peary — but  to  the  man  who  reached  the  Pole  a  year 
before  Peary  claims  to  have  been  there. 

Dr.  Cook  is  now  in  New  York  City,  and  I  have  talked  with 
him  several  times  recently.  With  the  information  that  I  my- 
self have  gathered,  I  believe  that  he  really  did  reach  the  Pole, 
or  came  so  close  to  that  point  that  he  is  entitled  to  the  credit 
of  the  Pole's  discovery. 

Bradley  Land  is  located  between  latitude  84  and  85. 
It  was  discovered  by  Cook  in  his  Poleward  march.  The  land 
ice,  or  glacial  ice,  which  Cook  also  discovered,  is  located  be- 


THE    LAND-DIVIDED    ICE-PACK    REPORTED    BY    PEARY 
PROVES  COOK'S  ATTAINMENT  OF  THE  POLE 


APPENDIX  587 

tween  latitude  87  and  latitude  88.  Cook's  line  of  march  car- 
ried him  thirty  or  forty  miles  to  the  east  of  Bradley  Land  and 
then  upon  the  glacial  ice.  The  proximity  to  the  new  land 
gave  Cook  a  favorable  land-protected  surface  upon  which  to 
travel,  and  also  afforded  him  protection  from  gales  and  from 
the  consequent  movements  of  the  pack-ice  westward  of  the  new 
lands.  Cook  traveled  in  the  lee  of  the  groups  of  islands  and 
over  ice  floes  more  stationary  than  the  ice  farther  to  the  east, 
over  which  Peary  traveled. 

EVIDENCE  OF  COOK'S  TRAVELS 

A  critical  examination  of  Peary's  book  not  only  reveals 
a  remarkable  corroboration  of  Cook's  discovery  of  Bradley 
Land  and  the  glacial  island  north  of  it,  but  also  seems  to  indi- 
cate the  existence  of  islands  farther  west  between  the  same 
parallels  of  latitude. 

Referring  to  page  250,  when  beyond  the  86th  parallel, 
Peary  says :  "In  this  march  there  was  some  pretty  heavy  going. 
Part  of  the  way  was  over  some  old  floes,  which  had  been  broken 
up  by  many  seasons  of  unceasing  conflict  with  the  winds  and 
tides.  Enclosing  these  more  or  less  level  floes  were  heavy  pres- 
sure ridges  over  which  we  and  the  dogs  were  obliged  to  climb." 
In  other  words,  the  floes  which  Peary  describes  in  this  part  of 
his  journey  clearly  indicate  that  they  were  just  such  floes  as 
one  would  expect  to  find  after  having  passed  through  a  group 
of  islands,  and,  therefore,  contrasting  naturally  with  the  im- 
mense size  of  the  floes  which  both  Cook  and  Peary  traversed 
north  of  the  88th  parallel. 

Beginning  with  page  258,  we  have  a  most  instructive  de- 
scription by  Peary  of  the  ice  between  the  parallels  wherein 
Cook  locates  the.  glacial  ice  and  upon  which  he  traveled  for  two 
days.  It  is  such  ice  as  one  would  expect  to  find  after  having 
passed  around  the  north  and  south  ends  of  an  island  from  forty 
to  sixty  miles  to  the  westward.  This  particular  area  Peary  des- 
ignates as  a  veritable  "Arctic  Phlegethon,"  and  it  is  inconceiv- 
able to  believe  in  this  Phlegethon  without  also  believing  in  the 


588  APPENDIX 

existence  of  the  glacial  ice,  as  located  and  described  by  Dr. 
Cook.  Let  us,  therefore,  examine  Peary's  narrative  minutely.  He 
says,  on  page  259,  "When  I  awoke  the  following  day,  March 
28,  the  sky  was  apparently  clear ;  but,  ahead  of  us,  was  a  thick, 
smoky,  ominous  haze  drifting  low  over  the  ice,  and  a  bitter 
northeast  wind,  which,  in  the  orthography  of  the  Arctic,  plainly 
spelled 'Open  Water'.  .  .  ." 

Also,  on  the  same  page:  "After  traveling  at  a  good  rate 
for  six  hours  along  Bartlett's  trail,  we  came  upon  his  camp  be- 
side a  wide  lead,  with  a  dense  black,  watery  sky  to  the  north- 
west, north  and  northeast." 

Again,  on  page  260:  ".     .     .     The  break  in  the  ice  had 

occurred  within  a  foot  of  the  fastening  of  one  of  my  dog  teams, 

Bartlett's  igloo  was  moving  east  on  the  ice  raft,  which 

had  broken,  and  beyond  it,  as  far  as  the  belching  fog  from  the 

lead  would  let  us  see,  there  was  nothing  but  black  water." 

Finally,  on  page  262,  Peary  says:  "This  last  march  had 
put  us  well  beyond  my  record  of  three  years  before,  probably 
87°  12'.  The  following  day,  March  29,  was  not  a  happy 
one  for  us.  Though  we  were  all  tired  enough  to  rest,  we 
did  not  enjoy  picnicing  beside  this  Arctic  Phlegethon  which, 
hour  after  hour,  to  the  north,  northeast  and  northwest,  seemed 
to  belch  black  smoke  like  a  prairie  fire.  .  .  .  Bartlett 
made  a  sounding  of  one  thousand  two  hundred  and  sixty 
fathoms,  but  found  no  bottom." 

In  the  foregoing  we  have  positive  proof  that  this  almost 
open  water  area  was  not  caused  by  shoals  at  that  immediate 
point. 

Peary's  concern  as  regards  this  big  hole  in  the  ice-pack  is 
set  forth  further  on  page  265,  as  follows:  "The  entire  region 
through  which  we  had  come  during  the  last  four  marches  was 
full  of  unpleasant  possibilities  for  the  future*  Only  too  well 
we  knew  that  violent  winds,  for  only  a  few  hours,  would  send 
the  ice  all  abroad  in  every  direction.  Crossing  such  a  zone  on 
a  journey  north  is  only  half  the  problem,  for  there  is  always 
the  return  to  be  figured  on.  Though  the  motto  of  the  Arctic 
must  be  'Sufficient  unto  the  day  is  the  evil  thereof,'  we  ardently 


APPENDIX  589 

hoped  there  might  not  be  violent  winds  until  we  were  south  of 
this  zone  again  on  the  return." 

From  this  it  is  apparent  that  Peary  realized  fully  the  per- 
manent character  of  this  Phlegethon  over  which  he  was  trav- 
eling. With  astonishing  persistency,  he  refers  again  and  again 
to  this  particular  locality.  Quoting  from  page  303,  when  on 
his  return  march,  he  says:  "There  was  one  region  just  above 
the  87th  parallel,  a  region  about  fifty-seven  miles  wide,  which 
gave  me  a  great  deal  of  concern  until  we  had  passed  it.  Twelve 
hours  of  strong  wind  blowing  from  any  quarter  excepting  the 
north  would  have  turned  that  region  into  an  open  sea.  I 
breathed  a  sigh  of  relief  when  we  left  the  87th  parallel  behind." 

And,  as  though  the  Phlegethon  had  not  already  been  suf- 
ficiently described,  on  page  307  we  find  recorded :  "Inspired  by 
our  good  fortune  we  pressed  on  again  completing  two  marches, 
and  when  we  camped  we  were  very  near  the  87th  parallel.  The 
entry  that  I  made  in  my  diary  that  night  is  perhaps  worth  quot- 
ing: "'Hope  to  reach  the  Marvin  Igloo  (86°  38')  to- 
morrow. I  shall  be  glad  when  we  get  there  on  to  the  big  ice 
again.  This  region  here  was  open  water  during  February  and 
the  early  part  of  March  and  is  now  covered  with  young  ice 
which  is  thoroughly  unreliable  as  a  means  of  return.  A  few 
hours  of  a  brisk  wind  east,  west,  or  south,  would  make  this  en- 
tire region  open  water  for  some  fifty  to  sixty  miles  north  and 
south,  and  an  unknown  extent  east  and  west.  Only  calm 
weather  or  a  northerly  wind  keeps  it  practicable.'  " 

ABSOLUTE  PROOF  OF  COOK'S  CLAIM 

From  the  foregoing  it  is  self-evident  that  Peary's  observa- 
tions by  sextant  could  not  be  more  corroborative  of  Cook's 
latitude  than  that  the  Phlegethon  is  proof  of  the  existence  of? 
a  glacial  island  between  the  same  two  parallels  traversed  by  both 
explorers.  Cook  had  discovered  the  cause,  and  Peary  followed 
to  discover  the  effect  of  that  cause.  To  one  familiar  with  the 
conditions  of  ice-floes  in  the  vicinity  of  islands  in  the  Arctic 
the  reasons  for  this  are  as  clear  as  it  would  be  to  the  lay  mind 


590  APPENDIX 

should  it  be  suddenly  announced  that  on  a  certain  date 
an  astronomer  had  discovered  the  head  of  a  comet,  which 
being  doubted  by  rival  investigators,  might  lead  to  the  un- 
happy discrediting  of  the  original  discoverer;  but  should  it  be 
as  suddenly  announced  that  a  rival  astronomer  had  observed 
the  tail  of  a  comet  in  the  same  locality  there  would  quite  cer- 
tainly follow  a  reversal  of  public  sentiment. 

EVIDENCE  OF  His  TRAVELS 

Of  first  importance  also  in  proving  the  existence  of  new 
lands  discovered  by  Cook  is  the  evidence  derived  from  the  ex- 
istence of  animal  life,  since  Arctic  game  clings  close  to  the 
shore  line  in  its  search  for  food.  Birds  must  find  their  nesting 
places  on  lands.  Foxes  live  upon  birds  and  the  refuse  left  in 
the  trails  of  polar  bears  and  seals.  Seals  feed  upon  shrimps 
and  find  the  chief  source  of  food  in  waters  close  to  the  land. 
Polar  bears  in  turn  feed  upon  seals,  and  necessarily  are  found 
more  numerously  about  lands  or  islands. 

For  this  reason  we  will  examine  Peary's  official  narrative 
of  his  journey  north  for  evidence  of  Dr.  Cook's  discovery  of 
land  to  within  2°  of  the  North  Pole.  Having  noted 
Dr.  Cook's  statement  relative  to  the  blow  hole  of  a  seal  near 
Bradley  Island,  we  will  follow  in  Peary's  trail  for  corrobora- 
tion  of  Cook's  journey  eleven  months  previous,  and  a  com- 
paratively short  distance  westward  of  Peary's  line  of  march. 
Referring  to  Peary's  "North  Pole"  on  page  249,  while  in  lati- 
tude 85°  48'  he  records: 

"While  we  were  engaged  in  this  business  we  saw  a  seal 
disporting  himself  in  the  open  water  of  the  lead." 

Still  farther  along,  when  in  latitude  86°  13',  Peary 
states,  on  page  252:  "Along  the  course  of  one  of  those  leads 
we  saw  the  fresh  tracks  of  a  polar  bear  going  west." 

ANIMAL,  TRAILS  VERIFY  COOK'S  REPORT 

Arctic  travelers  will  well  appreciate  the  force  of  this  state- 
ment relative  to  the  polar  bear,  who,  scenting  the  land  a  few 


APPENDIX  591 

miles  to  the  westward,  was  in  search  of  seals.  The  freshness  of 
the  bear's  tracks  is  proof  that  it  had  not  drifted  on  some  ice  floe 
from  remote  parts  of  the  Arctic  basin. 

Again,  referring  to  page  257,  we  find  that  Peary  while 
traveling  through  deep  snow  March  28,  records :  "During  the 
day  we  saw  the  tracks  of  two  foxes  in  this  remote  and  icy  wil- 
derness, nearly  two  hundred  and  forty  nautical  miles  beyond 
the  northern  coast  of  Grant  £«and." 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  Peary  does  not  state  just  how 
far  from  the  glacial  or  land  ice  upon  the  submerged  island  over 
which  Cook  traveled  the  fox  tracks  were.  But  it  is  evident 
that  the  foxes  were  less  than  two  sleeps  from  land,  since  Peary 
states  that  Marvin's  observation  placed  them  in  about  latitude 
86°  38',  the  very  latitude  in  which  Cook  traveled  upon  the  sta- 
tionary land  ice. 

Still  again,  page  307,  while  on  his  return  march  and  near 
the  88th  parallel  Peary  observes:  "Here  we  noticed  some  fox 
tracks  that  had  just  been  made.  The  animal  was  probably 
disturbed  by  our  approach.  These  are  the  most  northerly 
animal  tracks  ever  seen." 

Certainly.  Why  not?  Since  they  were  so  near  the  north- 
ern termination  of  the  land  ice  discovered  by  Dr.  Cook.  In 
this  connection  it  is  also  important  to  remark  that  between 
latitude  88  and  his  approximate  approach  to  the  Pole,  Dr. 
Cook  makes  no  mention  of  animal  life,  and  this  is  corroborated 
by  Peary's  own  statement  that  he  observed  no  tracks  of  animals 
beyond  the  88th  parallel.  Thus  Peary  corroborated  Cook  by 
the  very  absence  of  animal  life  in  the  very  region  where  Cook 
states  he  saw  no  land. 

PEARY'S  STATEMENTS  PROVE  COOK'S 

On  Peary's  return  journey  he  states  that  as  they  ap- 
proached Grant  Land  the  fresh  tracks  of  foxes  and  other  evi- 
dences of  animal  life  were  very  numerous.  And  if  the  nearness 
of  land  was  evidenced  in  this  case  it  is  also  clear  that  the  tracks 
and  appearance  of  animals  on  his  journey  in  the  high  latitudes 


592  APPENDIX 

should  be  given  equal  weight  as  evidence  of  the  lands  discovered 
by  Cook. 

The  line  of  deep  sea  soundings  taken  by  Peary  from  Cape 
Columbia  northward  indicates  a  steady  increase  in  depth  to 
latitude  84°  24',  where  the  lead  touched  bottom  at  eight  hun- 
dred and  twenty-five  fathoms,  until,  in  latitude  85°  23',  the 
sounding  showed  a  depth  of  but  three  hundred  and  ten  fathoms. 
Referring  to  this,  we  find  that  Peary  says,  on  page  338  of  his 
narrative:  "This  diminution  in  depth  is  a  fact  of  considerable 
interest  in  reference  to  the  possible  existence  of  land  to  the 
westward." 

It  seems  to  me  that  it  is  not  impertinent  to  remark  that  this 
land  to  the  westward  was  scarcely  two  sleeps  distant,  as  Dr. 
Cook  has  steadfastly  maintained.  Finally,  on  page  346,  Peary 
says:  "Taking  various  facts  into ' consideration  it  would  seem 
that  an  obstruction  (lands,  islands  or  shoals)  containing  nearly 
half  a  million  square  statute  miles  probably  exists,  and  another 
at  or  near  Crocker  Land." 

MORE  ACCURATE  OBSERVATIONS  BY  COOK  THAN  BY  PEARY 

And  this  is  all  that  Dr.  Cook  claims  in  his  location  of  land 
to  the  northward  of  the  very  Crocker  Land  to  which  Peary 
alludes. 

As  to  Dr.  Cook's  and  Peary's  observations  when  in  the 
immediate  vicinity  of  the  Pole,  I  would  call  attention  to  the 
following  facts:  Cook's  determination  by  the  sextant  of  the 
sun's  altitude  was  made  April  21,  1908 ;  Peary's  final  observa- 
tions were  taken  April  7  of  the  following  year.  The  sun  being 
thus  two  weeks  higher  at  the  time  Cook  made  his  observations, 
he  was  able  to  secure  a  more  accurate  series  of  altitudes,  and 
this  will  have  an  important  bearing  in  substantiation  of  his 
claims. 

Considering  the  difficulty  which  Peary  has  had  in  proving 
whether  he  was  at  1.6  miles  from  the  Pole  on  the  Grant  Land 
side  or  the  Bering  Strait  side,  and  whether  he  was  ten  or  fifteen 
miles  away,  I  think  Dr.  Cook  was  justified  in  saying  that,  al- 


APPENDIX  593 

though  he  believed  he  was  at  the  North  Pole,  he  is  not  claiming 
that  he  had  been  exactly  at  the  pin-point  of  the  North  Pole. 
At  any  rate,  it  places  Dr.  Cook  in  the  position  of  endeavoring 
to  tell  the' truth. 

In  this  connection  I  feel  like  replying  to  a  criticism  which 
Mr.  Grosvenor,  editor  of  the  National  Geographic  Magazine, 
published  over  his  own  signature  immediately  following  Dr. 
Cook's  return  from  the  Pole.  "Cook's  story  reads  like  that  of  a 
man  who  had  filled  his  head  with  the  contents  of  a  few  books  on 
polar  expeditions  and  especially  the  writings  of  Sverdrup." 

ARMCHAIR  CRITICISMS  UNFAIR 

Now,  since  Sverdrup  is  a  real  navigator,  having  accom- 
panied Nansen  during  his  three  years',  drift  on  the  Fram,  and, 
following  this,  having  himself  organized  and  led  an  expedition 
during  three  years  to  the  westward  of  Grinnell  Land,  in  the 
course  of  which  he  discovered  and  charted,  in  1902,  Heiberg 
Land  and  contiguous  islands  (which,  however,  Peary  charted 
four  years  later  and  named  Jessup  Land),  I  do  not  consider 
Mr.  Grosvenor's  armchair  criticism  of  the  writings  of  Capt. 
Sverdrup  and  of  Dr.  Cook  quite  in  keeping  with  the  principles 
of  a  square  deal  and  fair  play. 

Among  the  reasons  which  Peary  assigns  for  doubting 
Dr.  Cook  is  one  pertaining  to  the  original  records  which  Dr. 
Cook  unwillingly  left  at  Etah.  The  leaving  behind  of  these 
papers,  according  to  Peary,  was  merely  a  scheme  on  Cook's 
part,  so  that  he  might  claim  they  had  been  lost  or  destroyed 
and  thus  escape  being  forced  to  produce  them  in  substantiation 
of  his  claim.  Recently,  when  I  asked  Dr.  Cook  about  this,  his 
reply  was :  "This  does  not  sound  .very  manly.  If  this  was 
so  in  Peary's  belief,  why  did  he  not  bring  them  back?  Here 
was  absolute  proof  in  his  own  hands.  Why  did  he  bury  it?" 

Armchair  geographers  and  renegades  may  endeavor  to 
discredit  Dr.  Cook,  but  the  seals  and  polar  bears  and  little  foxes 
will  bear  testimony  of  unimpeachable  character  to  substantiate 
his  claims  as  the  discoverer  of  the  North  Pole.  The  reading 


594  APPENDIX 

public  will  not  forget  that  when  Paul  Du  Chaillu,  returning 
from  his  expedition  to  Africa,  reported  the  discovery  of  the 
pigmies,  he  was  denounced  as  a  faker  and  a  liar.  For  three 
years  Du  Chaillu,  as  he  has  told  me  himself,  sought  in  vain  to  re- 
establish his  credibility,  and  when  at  the  end  of  that  time  he 
succeeded  in  bringing  some  of  the  pigmies  and  exhibiting  them 
before  the  scientific  bodies  of  the  world,  then  the  "doubting 
Thomases"  were*  obliged  to  give  him  credit  as  the  discoverer  of 
the  African  dwarfs.  The  yellow  press  and  sensation  mongers 
will  decry  Dr.  Cook  as  they  did  Du  Chaillu,  for  some  years  to 
come,  but  Arctic  explorers  endorse  him  to-day. 

Rear  Admiral  W.  S.  Schley,  General  A.  W.  Greely,  Cap- 
tain Otto  Sverdrup,  Captain  Roald  Amundsen,  and  all  the 
world's  greatest  explorers  have  indorsed  Dr.  Cook. 

I  have  seen  Dr.  Cook's  original  field  notes,  his  observa- 
tions, and  the  important  chapters  of  his  book,  wherein  his  claim 
is  presented  in  such  a  way  that  the  scientific  world  must  accept 
it  as  the  record  and  the  proof  of  the  greatest  geographic  ac- 
complishment of  modern  times. 

Putting  aside  the  academic  and  idle  argument  of  pin-point 
accuracy — the  North  Pole  has  been  honestly  reached  by  Dr. 
Cook  350  days  before  anyone  else  claimed  to  have  been  there. 

(Signed)   EVELYN  BRIGGS  BALDWIN. 


VERDICT  OF  THE  GEOGRAPHIC  HISTORIAN 

DR.  COOK'S  RECORD  IS  ACCURATE 
IT  IS  CERTIFIED— IT  IS  CORROBORATED 

HE  IS  THE  DISCOVERER  OF 
THE  NORTH  POLE 

By  EDWIN  SWIFT  BALCH 
(From  the  N.  Y.  Tribune,  April  14,  1913) 

Which  was  it:  Cook  or  Peary?  Who  discovered  the  North 
Pole?  Everybody  thought  the  question  had  been  settled  long 
ago,  but  now  comes  an  eminent  geographer  and  explorer,  who 
says,  over  his  name,  that  both  got  to  the  "Big  Nail,"  and  that  it 
was  the  Brooklyn  doctor  who  did  it  first.  And  in  defense  of  his 
belief  he  cites  chapter  and  verse,  and  uses  Peary's  own  story 
to  prove  that  his  hated  rival  it  was  who  first  stood  at  the  top 
of  the  earth,  "where  every  one  of  the  cardinal  points  is  South." 

The  intrepid  defender  of  Cook  is  Edwin  Swift  Balch,  fellow 
of  the  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  member  of 
the  Wyoming  Historical  and  Geological  Society,  the  Franklin 
Institute,  American  Philosophical,  American  Geographical  and 
Royal  Geographical  Societies,  writer  on  arctic,  antarctic  geograph- 
ical and  ethnological  topics  for  the  learned  societies  of  the 
world.  Dr.  Balch  lives  at  No.  1412  Spruce  street,  Philadelphia, 
and  the  title  of  his  book,  just  published  by  Campion  &  Co.,  of 
Philadelphia,  is  "The  North  Pole  and  Bradley  Land." 

"ALL  TRAVELLERS  CALLED  LIARS" 

"From  time  immemorial  travellers  have  been  called  liars," 
says  Mr.  Balch  in  a  chapter  devoted  to  "travellers  who  were 
first  doubted  and  afterward  vindicated,"  and  it  is  on  this  general 
assumption  of  their  Munchausen-like  proclivities  that  much  of 


596  APPENDIX 

the  weight  of  argument  depends.  But  most  of  all  the  truthful- 
ness of  the  doctor's  assertion  that  on  April  21,  1908,  he  and  his 
two  Eskimo  boys,  E-tuk-i-shook  and  Ah-we-lah,  reached  the 
goal  and  "were  the  only  pulsating  creatures  in  a  dead  world  of 
ice,"  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  conditions  reported  by  Cook  as 
existing  there  were  corroborated  by  Peary. 

"The  man  who  breaks  into  the  unknown  may  say  what 
he  chooses  and  present  such  astronomical  observations  as  he 
sees  fit,  says  Mr.  Balch,  "but  his  proof  rests  on  his  word.  But 
if  the  next  traveller  corroborated  the  discoverer,  instantly  the 
first  man's  statements  are  immeasurably  strengthened. 

"To  solve  such  a  problem  as  that  of  who  discovered  the 
North  Pole,  this  comparative  method  seems  to  the  writer  the 
only  one  available.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  belief,  it  is  a  matter 
of  comparison  and  reasoning.  It  is  not  the  evidence  which  Cook 
produces  which  in  itself  alone  could  prove  Cook's  claims.  It  is 
the  geographical  evidence  offered  by  both  Cook  and  Peary, 
which,  when  carefully  compared,  affords,  in  the  writer's  judg- 
ment, the  only  means  of  arriving  at  a  conclusion.  It  is  Peary's 
statements  and  observations  which  prove,  as  far  as  can  be  proved 
at  present,  Cook's  statements." 

ALL  DISCOVERERS  FIRST  DOUBTED 

The  writer  then  mentions  a  score  of  the  great  discoverers 
and  explorers  of  history  who  have  been  defamed  and  berated 
by  their  contemporaries,  yet  whose  achievements  have  in  time 
proved  them  to  be  truth  tellers.  Marco  Polo,  "greatest  of  medi- 
aeval travellers,  was  generally  discredited."  Amerigo  Vespucci 
"to  this  day  remains  under  a  cloud  for  things  he  did  not  do." 
Fernao  Mendes  Pinto,  Nathaniel  B.  Palmer,  Robert  Johnson, 
James  Weddell,  von  Drygalski,  Nordenskjold,  Bruce,  Charcot, 
Dr.  Krapf,  Dr.  Robmann,  Du  Chaillu,  Stanley,  Livingstone, 
Colter,  all  have  been  reviled  as  fabricators,  yet  all  have  been 
honored  by  those  who  came  later,  he  says. 

"There  are  three  records  of  Dr.  Cook's  journey  of  1908," 
says  the  writer.  "Cook's  first  announcement  was  a  long  cable- 


APPENDIX  597 

gram  sent  from  Lerwick,  Shetland  Islands,  and  published  in  the 
'New  York  Herald*  of  September  2,  1909.  The  full  original 
narrative  was  sent  immediately  after  this  and  published  in  the 
'New  York  Herald'  between  September  15  and  October  7,  1909, 
with  the  title  The  Conquest  of  the  Pole.' 

"Both  of  these  were  written  and  sent  before  Cook  could,  by 
any  possibility ,  have  seen  or  heard  of  any  of  the  results  of  Peary's 
last  expedition. 

The  third  record  is  Cook's  book  "My  Attainment  of  the 
Pole,"  which  is  simply  an  enlargement  on  the  earlier  story. 

COOK  MUST  HAVE  BEEN  FIRST 

The  point  here  emphasized  is  that  Cook  could  not  have 
had  anything  on  which  to  base  his  description  of  conditions 
north  of  83 :20  north  latitude,  and  as  his  description  agreed  with 
that  later  given  by  Peary,  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  Cook 
was  there  first. 

"The  reason  for  this  is  that  these  statements  can  be  based 
on  nothing  but  Cook's  own  observations,"  says  Mr.  Balch,  "for 
Cook  started  for  Denmark  from  South  Greenland  before  Peary 
started  for  Labrador  from  North  Greenland,  and  therefore  every- 
thing Cook  stated  or  wrote  or  published  immediately  after  his 
arrival  in  Europe  must  be  based  on  what  Cook  observed  or 
experienced  himself. 

"Cook's  original  narrative  stands  on  its  own  merits;  it  is  the 
first  and  most  vital  proof  of  Cook's  veracity,  and  yet  it  has  passed 
almost  unnoticed. 

The  points  on  which  the  two  accounts,  Cook's  and  Peary's, 
of  conditions  at  90  degrees  north  agree  most  fundamentally,  and 
hence  most  definitely  establish  the  truthfulness  of  Cook,  are 
first  the  "account  of  the  land  sighted  in  84:20  north  to  85:11 
north  (Bradley  Land).  The  second  is  the  glacial  land  ice  in 
87-88  degrees  north.  The  third  is  the  account  of  the  discovery 
of  the  North  Pole  and  the  description  of  the  ice  at  the  North 
Pole." 


598  APPENDIX 

COOK'S  THREE  ACHIEVEMENTS 

Cook's  first  great  discovery,  the  writer  holds,  was  Bradley 
Land,  named  after  his  friend  and  backer.  This  land,  Cook 
declared,  had  a  great  crevasse  in  it,  making  it  appear  like  two 
islands,  the  southerly  one  starting  at  84:20  north.  Peary  made 
no  mention  of  land  north  of  83 :20  north. 

"Whether  there  is  land  or  water  in  the  intervening  sixty 
geographical  miles  is  a  problem,"  says  the  writer,  "but  in  order 
to  be  perfectly  fair  to  both  explorers  and  to  allow  for  errors  in 
observation  one  might  split  the  difference  at  83:50  north  and 
consider  that  latitude  as  a  dividing  line  between  the  lands  dis- 
covered respectively  by  Cook  and  Peary." 

"The  second  important  discovery  of  Cook's  is  the  glacial 
land  ice  in  87  north  to  87  north-88  north,"  says  the  writer.  "A 
closely  similar  occurrence  was  observed  by  Peary  on  his  1906 
trip  in  about  86  north,  60  west." 

But  the  most  important  particular  in  which  the  two  men 
agree,  in  the  mind  of  Mr.  Balch,  is  in  their  description  of  the 
ice  at  the  pole.  Cook  reported  that  it  was  "a  smooth  sheet  of 
level  ice."  The  writer  adds:  "if  that  description  of  the  North 
Pole  is  accurate,  the  writing  of  it  by  Cook,  first  of  all  men,  on 
the  face  of  it  is  proof  that  Cook  is  the  discoverer  of  the  North 
Pole." 

THE  SNOW  WAS  PURPLE 

But  not  only  was  the  ice  at  the  pole  smooth  and  level,  but 
the  snow  there  was  "purple"  in  the  story  of  Cook,  a  detail  in 
which  he  is  again  borne  out  by  Peary. 

"Purple  snow,"  says  the  writer,  "is  a  linguistic  expression, 
an  attempt  to  suggest  with  words  what  Frank  Wilbert  Stokes 
has  done  with  paints  in  his  superb  pictures  of  the  polar  regions. 
Hence,"  he  says,  "the  use  of  the  word  'purple'  by  Dr.  Cook, 
who  is  not  a  trained  artist,  proves  that  he  has  the  eye  of  an 
impressionist  painter  and  that  he  is  an  extremely  accurate  ob- 
server of  his  surroundings 


APPENDIX  .  599 

That  Cook's  description  is  accurate  is  in  the  next  place 
certified  to  by  Peary.  Peary  corroborates  Cook  absolutely 
about  conditions  enroute  to  the  North  Pole;  and  Cook  is  cor- 
roborated by  Peary,  not  only  by  what  Peary  saw,  but  by  what 
Peary  did.  If  there  was  anything  in  the  Western  Arctic  between 
the  North  Pole  and  87 :47  north  but  'an  endless  field  of  purple 
snows,'  smooth  and  slippery,  Peary  could  not  have  covered  the 
intervening  133  geographical  miles  in  two  days  and  a  few  hours. 
Peary,  therefore,  from  observation  and  from  actual  physical 
performance  proves  that  Cook's  most  important  statement  is 
true." 

The  evidence  is  thus  examined,  step  by  step.  The  state- 
ments of  the  two  men  are  compared,  word  by  word,  and  this  is 
the  conclusion  reached: 

"In  view  of  all  these  facts  it  becomes  certain  that  Cook 
must  have  written  his  description  of  the  North  Pole  from  his 
own  observations,  for  until  Cook  actually  traversed  the  Western 
Arctic  between  88  degrees  north  and  the  North  Pole,  and  told 
the  world  the  facts,  no  one  could  have  said  whether  in  that  area 
there  was  land  or  sea,  nor  have  stated  anything  of  the  conditions 
of  its  *ce,  with  its  unusual,  perhaps  unique,  flat  surface. 

"But  Cook,  in  his  first  cable  dispatch,  stated  definitely  and 
positively  and  finally  that  at  the  North  Pole  there  was  no  land, 
but  sea,  frozen  over  into  smooth  ice,  and  Peary  confirmed  Cook's 
statements. 

"Cook  was  accurate,  and  the  only  possible  inference  is  that 
Cook  was  accurate  because  Cook  knew;  and  the  further  inevitable 
conclusion  is  that  since  Cook  knew,  Cook  had  been  at  the  North 
Pole" 

(Ed.}  In  personal  letters  Balch  further  says,  "I  have  tried 
to  look  at  it  as  if  this  were  the  year  2013,  and  all  of  us  in  heaven. 
It  is  only  a  question  of  time  till  Dr.  Cook  is  recog- 
nized as  the  discoverer  of  the  North  Pole." 


FOR  A  NATIONAL  INVESTIGATION 

A  REQUEST 
By  DR.  FREDERICK  A.  COOK 

For  three  years  I  have  sought  in  various  ways  to  bring  about 
a  National  investigation  of  the  relative  merits  of  the  Polar  Attain- 
ment and  the  unjust  propaganda  of  distrust  which  followed. 
Such  an  investigation  would  do  no  harm  if  the  original  work  and 
the  later  criticism  has  been  done  in  good  faith.  Why  has  it 
been  refused?  To  take  the  ground  that  it  is  a  private  matter 
and  that  the  Government  has  taken  no  official  part  in  the  Polar 
race  is  to  assume  a  false  position.  The  injustice  of  this  evasive 
policy  is  brought  out  in  my  telegram  to  former  President  Taft — 
and  again  in  my  letter  to  President  Wilson.  To  compel  such 
an  investigation  and  to  appoint  Arctic  explorers  as  National 
experts  has  been  my  main  mission  on  the  platform.  Much 
against  my  will  I  have  been  forced  to  adopt  the  usual  political 
tactics  of  getting  to  the  voters  to  force  action  by  Congress  and 
the  official  circles  of  Washington. 

When  in  1911  the  bill  was  introduced  in  Congress  to  retire 
Peary  as  a  Rear  Admiral  with  a  pension,  I  supposed  that  this 
would  automatically  bring  about  a  thorough  scientific  examina- 
tion of  the  merits  of  the  rival  Polar  claims.  And  such  an  investi- 
gation I  then  believed  would  surely  bring  about  the  only  reward 
I  have  ever  claimed — The  appreciation  of  my  fellow  countrymen. 
It  was  however,  as  I  learned  later,  a  bold  Pro-Peary  movement 
fostered  by  lobbyists  whose  conscience  was  eased  by  drippings 
from  the  Hubbard-Bridgeman  Arctic  Trust,  but  I  still  believed 
that  the  dictates  of  National  prestige  were  such  that  the  usual 
white-washing  and  rail-roading  process  could  not  be  adopted 
in  a  question  of  such  International  importance.  I  did  not 


APPENDIX  601 

begrudge  Mr.  Peary  a  pension  if  honest  methods  were  pursued 
to  adjust  the  bitterly  fought  contention  in  the  eyes  of  the  world. 
My  friends  made  no  protest  in  Congress.  As  matters  progressed, 
however,  I  saw  that  such  men  as  Prof.  Willis  Moore  and  others 
of  his  kind — men  I  had  previously  trusted  as  honest,  really  proved 
themselves,  double-faced,  political  back-scratchers.  Then  I 
changed  my  tactics.  When  one's  honor  is  bartered  by  thieves 
under  the  guise  of  friends — and  when  these  thieves  are  part  of  a 
government  from  which  justice  is  expected — Then  one  is  bound 
to  uncover  the  leprous  spots  of  one's  accusers.  I  am  glad  to 
note  that  Prof.  Moore,  the  President  of  the  National  Geographic 
Society,  has  since  been  exposed  as  being  too  crooked  to  fit  into 
a  berth  of  the  present  administration.  There  are  others  whose 
long  fingers  have  been  in  the  Polar-pie  who  will  also  meet  their 
fate  as  time  exposes  their  flat-heads. 

To  call  a  halt  on  this  National  Humbug  where  only  official 
chair-warmers  and  political  crooks  served  as  experts,  I  sent 
the  following  telegram  to  former  President  Taf t : 

COPY  OF  TELEGRAM  SENT  TO 
FORMER  PRESIDENT  TAFT 

Omaha,  Neb.,  March  4,  1911 
The  President— The  White  House, 
Washington,  D.  C. 

When  you  sign  the  Peary  bill  you  are  honoring  a  man  with  sin-soiled  hands 
who  has  taken  money  from  our  innocent  school  children.  A  part  of  this  money 
I  believe  was  used  to  make  Arctic  concubines  comfortable.  I  am  ready  to  pro- 
duce others  of  the  same  opinion.  Thus  for  twenty  years  while  in  the  pay  of  the 
navy,  supplied  with  luxuries  from  the  public  purse,  Peary  has  enjoyed,  apparently 
with  National  consent,  the  privilege  denied  the  Mormons. 

There  are  at  least  two  children  now  in  the  cheerless  north  crying  for  bread 
and  milk  and  a  father.  These  are  growing  witnesses  of  Peary's  leprous  character. 
Will  you  endorse  it? 

By  endorsing  Peary  you  are  upholding  the  cowardly  verdict  of  Chester, 
Tittman  and  Gannett,  who  bartered  their  souls  to  Peary's  interests  by  suppressing 
the  worthlessness  of  the  material  upon  which  they  passed.  These  men  on  the 
Government  pay-roll  have  stooped  to  a  dishonor  that  should  make  all  fair-minded 
people  blush  with  shame.  This  underhanded  performance  calls  for  an  investi- 
gation. Will  you  close  these  dark  chamber  doings  to  the  light  of  justice? 

In  this  bill  you  are  honoring  one,  who  in  seeking  funds  for  legitimate 
exploration,  has  passed  the  hat  along  the  line  of  easy  money  for  twenty  years.  Much 
of  this  money  was  in  my  judgment  used  to  promote  a  lucrative  fur  and  ivory 
trade,  while  the  real  effort  of  getting  to  the  pole  was  delayed  seemingly  for  com- 
mercial gain.  Thus  engaged  ia  a  propaganda  of  hypocrisy  he  stooped  to  immer- 


602  APPENDIX 

ality  and  dishonor  and  ultimately  when  his  game  of  fleecing  the  public  was  threat- 
ened, he  tried  to  kill  a  brother  explorer.  The  stain  of  at  least  two  other  lives  is 
on  this  man.  This  bill  covers  a  page  in  history  against  which  the  spirits  of  mur- 
dered men  cry  for  redress. 

Peary  is  covered  with  the  scabs  of  unmentionable  indecency,  and  for  him 
your  handiis  about  to  put  the  seal  of  clean  approval  upon  the  dirtiest  campaign 
of  bribery,  conspiracy  and  black-dishonor  that  the  world  has  ever  known. 

If  you  can  close  your  eyes  to  this,  sign  the  Peary  bill. 

(Signed)  FREDERICK  A.  COOK 

The  telegram  was  received  but  not  acknowledged — the 
Peary  bill  was  signed.  But  the  false  assumption  of  Peary's 
"Discovery  of  the  Pole"  was  eliminated  from  the  bill.  There  is 
therefore  no  National  endorsement  of  Peary;  though  he  was  given 
an  evasive  Old  Age  Pension  which  the  newspapers  quoted  incor- 
rectly as  an  official  recognition  of  Peary's  claim  to  polar  priority. 

I  now  appeal  to  President  Wilson  and  the  present  adminis- 
tration to  make  some  official  endeavor  to  clear  our  National 
emblem  of  the  stain  of  the  envious  Polar  contention.  To  that 
end  I  have  written  the  following  letter: 

AN  APPEAL  TO  PRESIDENT  WILSON 

(COPY  OF  A  LETTER) 

Chicago,  May  1,  1913 
Honored  Sir: 

I  appeal  to  you  to  forward  a  movement  which  will  adjust  in  the  eyes  of 
the  world  the  contention  regarding  the  rival  Polar  claims.  The  American  Eagle 
has  spread  its  wings  of  glory  over  the  world's  top.  It  would  seem  to  be  a  National 
duty  to  determine  officially  whether  there  is  room  for  one  or  two  under  those 
wings. 

The  graves  of  our  worthy  ancestors  are  marks  in  the  ascent  of  the  ladder 
of  latitudes.  Hundreds  of  lives,  millions  of  dollars,  have  been  sacrificed  in  the 
quest  of  the  Pole.  The  success  at  last  attained  has  lifted  the  United  States  to 
the  first  ranks  as  a  Nation  of  Scientific  Pioneers.  Every  true  American  has 
quivered  with  an  extra  thrill  of  pride  with  the  knowledge  that  the  unknown  boreal 
center  has  been  pierced  and  that  the  stars  and  stripes  have  been  put  to  the  virgin 
breezes  of  the  North  Pole.  The  unjustified  and  ungracious  controversy  which 
followed  has  wounded  our  National  honor;  it  has  left  a  stain  upon  our  flag.  Is  it 
not,  therefore,  our  duty  as  a  Nation  to  dispel  the  cloud  of  contention  resting  over 
the  glory  of  Polar  attainment? 

I  have  given  twenty  years  to  the  life-sapping  task  of  Polar  exploration — 
all  without  pay — all  for  the  benefit  of  future  man.  Returning — asking  for  nothing, 
expecting  only  brotherly  appreciation  of  my  fellow  countrymen,  I  am  compelled 
to  face  an  unjust  battle,of  political  intrigues  by  men  in  the  pay  of  the  Government. 
My  effort  now  is  not  for  money  .nor  for  a  pension,  but  to  defend  my  honor  and 
that  of  my  family.  The  future  of  my  children  demands  an  exposition  of  the 
unfair  methods  of  the  arm-chair  geographers  in  Washington.  However,  I  do 
not  ask  the  administration  to  defend  me  or  my  posterity,  but  do  ask  that  the 


APPENDIX  603 

men  who  draw  a  salary  from  the  National  treasury  be  made  answerable  for  a 
propaganda  of  character  assassination,  among  these  is  Prof.  Willis  Moore  and 
others  of  the  so-called  National  Geographic  Society. 

The  National  Geographic  Society  with  Prof.  Moore  as  President  is  respon- 
sible for  the  false  interpretation  of  the  rival  Polar  claims.  This  society  is  a  private 
organization  used  mostly  for  political  purposes;  for  two  dollars  per  year  a  college 

?rofessor  or  a  street-sweeper  becomes  with  equal  facility  a  "national  geographer." 
t  is,  therefore,  not  "national"  nor  "geographic,"  and  when  this  society  poses  as 
a  scientific  body,  it  is  an  imposition  upon  American  intelligence,  and  yet  it  is  this 
society,  with  the  well-known  political  trickery  of  Prof.  Moore,  which  has  attempted 
to  decide  for  the  world  the  merits  of  Polar  attainment.  An  investigation  of  the 
wrong  doings  of  this  society  will  quickly  bring  to  light  the  injustice  of  the  Polar 
controversy. 

A  commission  of  Polar  explorers  appointed  by.  National  authority  will 
end  for  all  times  the  problem  of  the  rival  Polar  claims.  There  is  an  abundance 
of  material  on  both  sides  by  which  such  a  commission  could  come  to  a  reasonable 
conclusion.  The  general  impression  that  the  Polar  contention  has  been  scien- 
tifically determined  is  not  true.  There  has  been  no  real  investigation  into  either 
claim.  Such  an  investigation  could  only  be  made  by  Arctic  explorers,  and  to 
bring  about  this  end  I  would  suggest  the  appointment  of  an  International  Com- 
mission of  such  men  as  General  A.  W.  Greely,  U.  S.  A.,  Captain  Otto  Sverdrup 
of  Norway  and  Professor  Georges  Lecointe  of  Belgium.  Their  decision  would 
be  accepted  everywhere.  Greely  and  Sverdrup  have  each  spent  four  years  in 
the  very  region  under  discussion,  and  Lecointe  is  the  Secretary  of  the  International 
Bureau  for  Polar  Research  and  also  director  of  the  Royal  Observatory  of  Belgium. 
Such  men  will  render  a  decision  free  from  personal  bias,  free  from  National  preju- 
dice and  their  verdict  will  be  accepted  by  the  Nations  of  the  world. 

Though  I  am  an  interested  party  I  insist  that  my  appeal  is  not  altogether 
a  personal  one.  In  the  interest  of  that  deep-seated  American  sense  of  fair  play, 
in  the  interest  of  National  honor,  in  the  interest  of  the  glory  of  our  flag,  it  would 
seem  to  be  a  National  duty  to  have  the  distrust  of  the  Polar  attainment  cleared 
by  an  International  commission. 

Respectfully  submitted, 

(Signed)  FREDERICK  A.  COOK 
To  the  President, 

The  White  House, 

Washington,  D.  C. 

Thousands  of  requests  similar  to  those  reproduced  below 
have  gone  to  various  officials  in  Washington.  Such  appeals 
demand  action. 

Chicago,  May  7,  1913 
Mr.  Josephus  Daniels,  Secretary  of  the  Navy, 

Washington,  D.  C. 
Dear  Sir: 

Rear  Admiral  Peary  wears  the  stripes  of  the  Navy,  he  is  drawing  a  pension 
of  $6,000.00  per  year  from  the  tax-payers — The  National  dictates  of  honor  compel 
such  a  man  to  be  clean  morally — honest  and  upright  officially.  Dr.  Cook  has 
publicly  made  charges  against  Peary  which  relegate  this  Naval  Officer  to  the  rank 
of  a  common  thief  and  degenerate.  In  his  book,  "My  Attainment  of  the  Pole," 
(Mitchell-Kennedy,  N.  Y.)  there  are  specific  charges  made  which  call  for  an 
investigation.  These  charges  have  remained  unanswered  for  three  years — Why? 

In  the  Polar  controversy  the  flag  has  been  dragged  through  muck,  and  this 
dishonor  seems  to  rest  upon  a  man  for  whose  actions  you  are  responsible. 


604  APPENDIX 

The  American  people  have  a  right  to  demand  an  investigation  into  the 
intrigue  of  the  Peary  Polar  Propaganda,  and  as  one  believing  in  justice  at  the 
bar  of  public  opinion,  I  ask  that  you  take  steps  to  clear  this  cloud  in  the  eyes  of 
the  world. 

Respectfully, 

FRED  HIGH 

Editor  of  The  Platform, 
The  Lyceum  and  Chautauqua  Magazine, 

Steinway  Hall,  Chicago. 

Chicago,  May  22,  1913. 
To  Congressman  James  R.  Mann, 

Washington,  D.  C. 
Dear  Sir: 

The  conquest  of  the  North  Pole  has  lifted  the  United  States  to  a  first 
position  as  a  Nation  of  scientific  pioneers.  The  controversy  which  followed  is  a 
blot  on  our  flag  and  it  is  a  slur  at  our  National  honor.  From  the  Government 
purse  and  from  private  resources  we  have  spent  millions  to  reach  the  top  of  the 
earth;  it  would  appear  therefore  to  be  our  duty  as  a  Nation  to  adjust  the  Polar 
contention  in  the  eyes  of  the  world. 

If  Dr.  Cook  has  reached  the  Pole,  a  year  earlier  than  Peary,  as  most  Arctic 
explorers  believe,  then  the  seeming  endorsement  and  the  pension  of  the  Naval 
officer  is  an  injustice  to  Dr.  Cook  and  an  imposition  on  the  public;  if  both  have 
reached  the  Pole  then  there  should  be  a  suitable  recognition  and  reward  extended 
to  each.  As  one  of  thousands  of  American  citizens,  I  beg  of  you  to  forward  a 
movement  which  will  bring  about  a  National  investigation  into  this  problem, 
with  a  suitable  provision  for  a  proper  recognition. 

Respectfully, 
CHARLES  W.  FERGUSON, 

Pres., 
The  Chautauqua  Managers  Association, 

Orchestra  Bldg.,  Chicago. 


CAN  THE  GOVERNMENT  ESCAPE  THE 
RESPONSIBILITY? 

BY  FRED  HIGH 

While  the  Danes  were  royally  entertaining  Dr.  Cook  on 
September  4th,  1909,  telegrams  were  being  showered  upon  him 
by  all  the  world.  The  King  of  Sweden  sent  this  message : 

"A  BRILLIANT  DEED,  OF  WHICH  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE  MAY 
RIGHTLY  BE  PROUD." 

The  American  minister  to  Denmark  made  Dr.  Cook's  visit 
state  business  and  joined  in  the  effort  to  share  Cook's  honors. 
Dr.  Cook  paused  in  the  midst  of  all  this  splendor  to  cable  the  fol- 
lowing message  to  our  President: 

Copenhagen,  Sept.  4,  1900. 
President, 

The  White  House,  Washington. 

I  have  the  honor  to  report  to  the  chief  magistrate  of  the  United  States 
that  I  have  returned,  having  reached  the  North  Pole." 

To  which  President  Taft  cabled  the  following  reply: 

Beverly,  Mass.,  Sept.  4,  1909. 
Frederick  A.  Cook, 

Copenhagen,  Denmark. 

Your  dispatch  received.  Your  report  that  you  have  reached  the  North 
Pole  calls  for  my  heartiest  congratulations,  and  stirs  the  pride  of  all  Americans 
that  this  feat  which  has  so  long  baffled  the  world  has  been  accomplished  by  the 
intelligent  energy  and  wonderful  endurance  of  a  fellow  countryman." 

WILLIAM  H.  TAFT. 

Was  President  Taft  speaking  for  the  American  people  when 
he  called  Dr.  Cook's  achievement  the  pride  of  all  Americans? 
Were  we  ready  to  share  Cook's  joys?  Share  his  honors?  If  so, 
then  in  all  fairness,  should  we  not  share  in  his  trials  and  tribula- 
tions? Are  we  like  the  crazy  base  ball  fan  who  cheers  a  pitching 
hero  when  he  wins  and  insults  him  with  all  kinds  of  vile  epithets 
when  he  loses? 

For  one  I  shared  in  that  thrill  of  pride  and  was  glad  to  know 
that  I  had  had  dealings  with  Dr.  Cook  before  he  went  in  search 
of  the  Pole,  consequently,  I  felt  in  honor  bound  to  withhold  any 
hasty  criticisms  that  I  might  feel  tempted  to  hurl  at  Dr.  Cook. 
All  who  joined  in  his  prajses  should  insist  upon  it  that  he  be  given 
a  chance  to  disprove  every  charge  that  has  been  brought  against 
him,  that  he  be  given  a  chance  to  explain  his  every  act  before 


606  APPENDIX 

we  join  in  the  cry  to  crucify  him.  "Crucify  him,  or  give  us  the 
most  contemptible  coward,  moral  leper  and  political  crook  that 
has  lived  in  our  time,"  if  Dr.  Cook's  charges  are  true. 

Believing  that  this  is  a  matter  that  ought  to  be  fairly  settled 
by  competent  and  orderly  methods,  I  have  written  to  several 
congressmen  and  senators,  and  the  following  correspondence 
speaks  for  itself: 

Hon.  Wooda  N.  Carr,  Chicago,  Illinois,  May  7,  1913. 

Washington,  D.  C. 
Dear  Sir: 

I  wish  to  ask  a  personal  favor  of  you,  one  that  I  think  the  public  is  inter- 
ested in  and  one  that  I  think  the  world  ought  to  know  more  about.  It  is  the 
Cook-Peary  controversy.  I  have  given  this  considerable  thought  and  study. 
I  have  heard  Dr.  Cook  lecture  a  number  of  times  and  have  talked  to  him  person- 
ally and  tried  to  find  out  from  every  angle  the  facts  as  to  whether  or  not  his  story 
is  true.  So  far  I  have  been  unable  to  find  a  flaw  in  any  of  his  statements,  and  Mr. 
Peary  by  his  actions  has  given  every  evidence  that  Dr.  Cook  is  telling  the  truth. 
Therefore,  as  a  citizen  who  is  interested  in  the  larger  affairs  of  this  country,  and 
as  the  editor  of  The  Platform,  which  is  devoted  to  the  Lyceum  and  Chautauqua 
movement,  I  am  asking  whether  or  not  it  would  be  compatible  with  fair  play  and 
our  sense  of  justice  and  real  national  dignity  to  take  this  controversy  out  of  the 
hands  of  individuals  and  settle  it  by  an  official  tribunal,  or  by  a  commission  of 
arctic  explorers. 

I  shall  be  very  glad,  indeed,  if  you  will  inform  me  of  what  steps  could  best 
be  taken  to  bring  about  the  settlement  of  this  controversy.  If  there  are  any 
authoritative  facts  developed  along  this  line,  I  will  be  glad  to  know  where  to 
locate  them  as  my  sole  object  is  to  learn  the  truth. 

Under  separate  cover  I  am  sending  you  copy  of  The  Platform  which  con- 
tains Doctor  Cook's  letter  to  President  Wilson,  which  I  hope  you  will  read. 

Yours  very  truly, 

(Signed)    FRED  HIGH. 

House  of  Representatives,  U.  S. 

Mr.  Fred  High,  Washington,  D.  C.,  May  13,  1913. 

602  Steinway  Hall. 

Chicago.  111. 
Dear  Sir: 

Your  letter  of  the  7th  inst.,  regarding  the  Cook-Peary  controversy,  re- 
ceived. I  do  not  think  it  would  be  possible  to  get  Congress  to  interfere  in  this 
matter.  It  is  a  question  of  little  concern  to  many  who  discovered  the  Pole,  or 
whether  it  was  discovered  at  all.  It  seems  to  be  a  personal  matter,  the  settle- 
ment of  which  should  be  determined  by  the  persons  interested. 

Very  truly  yours, 

(Signed)     WOODA  N.  CARR. 

Is  it  a  matter  of  no  concern  whether  or  not  the  North  Pole 
has  been  discovered?  Is  it  a  matter  of  no  concern  whether  a  man 
can  fake  a  story  about  having  discovered  the  North  Pole,  receive 
the  homage  of  the  world,  fleece  the  American  public  out  of  thous- 
ands of  dollars  for  fees  to  hear  his  lecture  and  go  unpunished? 
If  Dr.  Cook  has  hoaxed  the  world  as  so  many  have  charged  him 
with  having  done,  this  is  more  than  a  private  matter. 


APPENDIX  607 

If  Dr.  Cook  has  discovered  the  North  Pole,  are  we  acting 
the  part  of  fellow  countrymen  by  shirking  our  duty?  Shall  Con- 
gress say  that  the  clique  at  Washington  either  make  good  its 
charges  against  Dr.  Cook,  or  be  made  to  retract  and  stand  dis- 
graced in  the  eyes  of  the  world?  We  shared  Cook's  honors. 
Will  we  shirk  when  he  calls  upon  his  countrymen  for  a  square 
deal? 

The  following  letter  was  received  from  Senator  Miles 
Poindexter  and  should  be  carefully  studied: 

United  States  Senate,  Committee  on  Expenditures  in  the  War  Department. 

Washington,  D.  C.  May  9,  1913. 
Mr.  Fred  High,  Editor, 

The  Platform,  602  Steinway  Hall, 

64  E.  Van  Buren  St., 
Chicago,  Illinois. 
My  dear  Mr.  High: 

I  have  yours  of  7th  inst.,  and  was  very  much  pleased  to  know  that  you  are 
interested  in  securing  a  fair  examination,  officially  if  possible,  into  Dr.  Cook's 
claims  of  discovery. 

Ever  since  the  Cook-Peary  controversy  began,  I  have  paid  more  or  less 
close  attention  to  the  questions  involved  therein.  I  have  talked  with  a  number 
of  residents  around  the  neighborhood  of  Mt.  McKinley,  Alaska,  some  of  whom 
are  friendly  and  some  unfriendly  to  Dr.  Cook;  have  read  with  great  care  Dr. 
Cook's  book  describing  his  polar  expedition;  and  have  followed  through  the  news- 
papers and  otherwise  the  various  phases  of  the  controversy  and  happenings  in 
connection  therewith.  As  a  lawyer,  I  have  always  been  especially  interested  in 
the  study  of  the  credibility  of  witnesses,  the  weight  of  evidence;  and  in  deducing 
logical  conclusions  therefrom.  From  the  careful  consideration  of  the  comparative 
character  of  the  witnesses  for  and  against  Dr.  Cook,  their  motives,  and  the  atti- 
tude and  hearing  throughout  the  controversy  of  Cook  and  Peary  themselves,  I 
have  a  very  fixed  and  firm  conviction  that  Dr.  Cook's  story  is  true.  I  believe 
the  majority  of  the  people  of  the  country  who  are  interested  in  the  subject  are 
of  the  same  opinion. 

From  my  observation  of  the  miserable  petty  cliques  and  factional  squab- 
bles in  official  circles  of  the  Government,  such  for  instance  as  the  Sampson-Schley 
controversy  and  innumerable  smaller  disputes,  I  have  long  ago  ceased  to  accept, 
as  necessarily  correct,  official  evidence  merely  because  it  is  official. 

I  have  not  yet  seen  a  copy  of  The  Platform  containing  Dr.  Cook's  letter 
to  President  Wilson  which  you  say  you  are  forwarding  me  under  separate  cover, 
and  when  received  will  read  it  with  much  interest.  Not  having  read  it,  I  do  not 
know  just  what  plan  Dr.  Cook  proposes  for  an  official  investigation.  I  will  be  glad 
however,  to  learn  the  basis  upon  which  it  is  proposed  to  make  the  test  an  official 
investigation.  It  occurs  to  me  that  it  is  entirely  a  private  matter  and  that  the 
Government  officially  has  nothing  to  do  with  it.  Every  man  has  as  much  right 
as  any  other  man  to  form  a  conclusion  in  the  case;  public  opinion,  if  the  facts 
can  be  presented  to  the  public,  is  the  best  judgment.  I  would  be  apprehensive  of 
submitting  the  absolute  determination  of  the  question  to  an  official  tribunal  for 
the  reasons,  among  others,  which  I  have  mentioned  above.  However,  will  be 
glad  to  learn  further  as  stated  of  the  proposal. 
With  kind  regards. 

Very  truly  yours, 

(Signed)     MILES  POINDEXTEB. 


608  APPENDIX 

Senator  Poindexter's  letter  is  a  stricture  on  official  Wash- 
ington that  ought  to  cause  every  true  patriot  to  blush  with  shame. 
Are  we  at  the  point  where  even  an  impartial  investigation  can 
not  be  had  into  the  controversy  as  to  who  discovered  the  North 
Pole? 

There  are  thousands  who  believe  this  is  a  question  that 
touches  our  national  honor  and  therefore  is  a  rightful  subject  for 
a  Congressional  Investigation.  Those  who  believe  this,  ought 
to  write  to  their  representatives  at  Washington  and  urge  such 
action  as  will  lay  the  facts  before  the  world. 

The  following  letter  from  Hon.  Champ  Clark  is  worthy  of 
much  consideration  as  it  reveals  the  real  status  of  this  contro- 
vers^y  as  it  exists  in  official  circles. 

Dr.  Cook  is  a  private  citizen  with  no  Cook  Arctic  club  to 
back  him  and  share  his  gains.  No  National  Geographical  Society 
helped  to  finance  his  venture  with  the  hope  of  managing  his 
lectures  as  a  sort  of  bureau  graft.  He  is  a  private  citizen. 

Speaker  Clark's  letter  furnishes  us  with  the  reason  for 
asking  Congress  to  take  a  hand  in  this  affair  for  it  shows  how 
ready  our  statesmen  are  to  give  ear  when  the  people  speak: 

THE  SPEAKER'S  ROOM 
HOUSE  OF  REPRESENTATIVES 

WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 

May  10,  1913. 
Mr.  Fred  High, 

Editor  of  The  Platform, 
Chicago,  Illinois. 
My  dear  Mr.  High: 

I  have  your  letter  touching  the  Cook-Peary  controversy.  I  note  what 
you  say.  I  do  not  see  clearly  what  it  is  that  you  are  suggesting.  That  is,  whether 
you  want  Congress  to  formulate  some  plan  to  determine  the  matter  by  appointing 
a  commission  of  Arctic  explorers,  or  exactly  what  it  is  that  you  do  want. 

Of  course,  I  do  not  know  very  much  about  Arctic  explorations  and  do  not 
set  a  very  high  store  on  them  as  I  never  could  understand  what  sort  of  good  would 
come  of  locating  the  North  Pole.  I  am  a  good  deal  of  a  utilitarian,  and  am  a 
disciple  of  the  Baconian  philosophy  rather  than  of  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle 
and  the  Greek  school.  To  tell  the  truth,  I  have  always  had  a  hazy  sort  of  an 
idea  that  both  Cook  and  Peary  discovered  the  North  Pfele.  I  have  not  valued 
my  opinion  highly  enough  to  undertake  to  exploit  it  or  to  induce  anybody  else 
to  believe  it  as  I  have  enough  other  matters  on  hand  to  employ  the  time  and 
attention  of  one  man. 

Wishing  you  success,  I  am 

Your  friend, 

(Signed)  CHA.MP  CLARK 


APPENDIX  609 

The  following  opinion  of  the  men  on  the  Chautauqua  plat- 
form is  attributed  to  our  good  friend  from  Missouri : 


"The  Chautauqua  has  been  a  powerful  force  in 
directing  the  political  thought  of  the  country,  which  is 
largely  sociological  in  these  latter  days.  I  approve  the 
Chautauqua  lecturers,  with  whom  I  have  been  asso- 
ciated, because  they  constitute  as  fine  a  group  of  men 
and  women  as  can  be  found  among  the  splendid  citizen- 
ship of  America.  I  have  a  deep  and  abiding  interest 
in  them,  and  bid  them  a"  hearty  godspeed  in  their 
work." 


Dr.  Cook  is  perhaps  the  leading  Chautauqua  lecturer  of 
the  present  season.  He  is  now  booked  to  appear  at  seventy 
Chautauquas  this  Summer  and  it  is  certain  that  even  the  genial 
Speaker  of  the  House  wouldn't  want  to  associate  with  a  man 
who  would  hoax  the  world  for  gain.  Certainly  he  wouldn't 
want  "The  greatest  liar  of  the  Century  to  be  one  of  the  powerful 
forces  directing  the  political  thoughts  of  the  Century.  If  Dr. 
Cook  discovered  the  North  Pole  he  should  be  given  the  credit 
for  that  great  achievement. 

We  certainly  have  a  right  to  see  to  it  that  neither  Dr.  Cook 
nor  Mr.  Peary  are  treated  as  though  they  were  the  scum  of  the 
earth.  Dr.  Cook  has  brought  charges  against  Mr.  Peary  as  a 
Naval  officer.  He  still  brings  these  charges,  and  he  should  be 
made  to  prove  them.  Peary,  an  officer  of  the  Navy,  has  brought 
charges  against  Cook  and  he  should  be  made  to  prove  them. 

Mr.  Peary  is  an  officer  of  our  navy,  drawing  an  old  age  pen- 
sion. His  position  is  such  that  he  cannot  ignore  Dr.  Cook's  open 
charges.  He  is  honor  bound  to  protect  the  good  name  of  this 
great  country  by  asking  an  investigation  of  these  charges.  To 
remain  silent,  is  to  stand  to  be  branded  as  the  arch-degenerate 
of  our  day.  Don't  forget  it  was  he  who  opened  up  the  mud  bat- 
teries and  caused  this  undignified  controversy. 

No  honorable  man  can  allow  such  open-  charges  of  gross 
immorality  as  Dr.  Cook  preferred  against  Mr.  Peary  in  his  tele- 
gram to  President  Taft.  These  have  been  printed  in  magazines 
and  newspapers  as  well  as  appearing  in  Dr.  Cook's  books,  now 
in  the  sixtieth  thousand  edition. 

Here  in  Illinois  press  stories  of  improper  conduct  implicating 
Lieutenant-Governor  Barrett  O'Hara  were  circulated  and  .he 
immediately  asked  the  state  legislature  to  investigate  them.  The 
legislature  appointed  a  committee  that  took  testimony  and  re- 
ported these  stories  were  groundless  and  false. 


610  APPENDIX 

Is  a  retired  Admiral  less  important  in  the  eyes  of  the  world 
than  the  Lieu  tenant-Governor  of  Illinois,  or  has  the  "old  tar" 
taken  an  immunity  bath? 

Are  we  any  farther  along  than  were  those  who  put  Columbus  in 
chains  and  stoned  the  Prophets  and  nailed  the  Christ  to  the  Cross? 
Are  we  so  engrossed  in  the  material  things  that  all  questions  of 
honor  are  of  no  concern  to  us? 

It  is  true  that  the  bar  of  public  opinion  is  the  court  of  last 
resort  in  a  real  democracy,  but  it  is  equally  true  that  it  is  essential 
to  see  that  the  source  of  public  opinion  be  not  polluted.  Should 
our  school  children  be  taught  that  Peary  discovered  the  Pole  if 
Dr.  Cook  was  there  first? 

Senator  Robert  M.  LaFollette  says:  "You  can't  buy, 
you  can't  subsidize  the  Lyceum.  At  least,  it  never  has  been 
done.  The  Press  has  been  subsidized.  Papers  and  magazines 
which  were  printing  the  bad  records  of  public  officials  and  political 
parties  have,  in  many  instances,  been  forced  out  of  the  field  or 
silenced.  Special  privilege  organized  as  a  System  has  its  own 
press. 

But  the  Lyceum  platform  is  free.  Really,  I  sometimes 
think  that,  from  the  days  of  Wendell  Phillips  to  now,  the  Lyceum 
has  pretty  nearly  been  the  salvation  of  the  country." 

The  Lyceum  and  the  Chautauqua  have  given  Dr.  Cook  a 
fair  hearing,  and  it  is  now  a  matter  of  National  pride  that  when 
the  press  was  silent  or  hostile,  Congress  indifferent,  the  Chautau- 
qua, the  one  distinctively  American  institution,  gave  him  an 
honest,  impartial  hearing. 

I  write  as  I  do  because,  being  the  editor  of  The  Lyceum  and 
Chautauqua  Magazine,  I  have  tried  to  give  Dr.  Cook  the  same 
opportunity  to  present  his  case  as  I  would  expect  him  to  do  by 
me  were  I  in  his  place  and  he  in  mine. 

AFTER  YOU  HAVE  READ  THIS  BOOK  KINDLY  WRITE 
YOUR  CONGRESSMAN  CALLING  FOR  AN  INVESTIGATION. 


INDEX 

Acpohon,    Trail    Along,    183;    "The  Auckland,  Cape,  60 

Land  of  Guillemots,"  191  Auks,  62 

Acponie  Island,  50  Auroras,  112 

Adams,    Captain,    458;    Peary    Sup-  Axel  Heiberg  Land,  193,  194,  201,  212, 

pressed     Letter     Presented     by,  34,6    337,  S29,  333 

459,  487,  489 

Advance  Bay,  106  Bache    Peninsulaj   Headed    for>    158> 
Ah-tah,  Turns  Away  Ma-nee,  58  435 

Ah-we-lah,    Told    Bartlett    That    Ob-  Baffin's  Bay,  362 

servations   Were   Made,    13,    189;  Baldwin,  Captain  Evelyn  B.,  135,  540, 

Chosen    for    Dash    to    Pole,    196; 


.  h      Cache  of  Supplies 

335;   Prevents   Boat   From   Sink-  b^  * 

ing,  366,  385,  399;  Recounts  Re-  Bancroft  Bay,  103 

markable    Journey    to    the    Pole-,  Bangor,  483 

452  Barrill  Affidavit,  13,  14,  522,  523,  524 

Ahwynet,  96  Bartlett,  Capt.  Robt.  A.,  Learns  from 
Alaskan  Wilds,  29  Eskimos  That  Observations  Were 

Alexander,  Cape,  65,   117,  122,  152  Made,  13;  Assisted  Peary  in  His 

Al-leek-ah,  95  Lies,  485,  558,  560,  562. 

American  Legation,  469  Bathurst  Land,  337 

,   -P,.  T       T    or,A  Battle  Harbor,  Arrival  at,  31;  Ques- 

Amund  Rmgnes  Land,  329  tiong  Pjep'ared  by  Pe;ry  '^^ 

Anderson,  Mr.,  460  489,  557 

Annoatok,  25  ;  Supplies  Stored  at,  30  ;  Bay,    Baffin's,    362;     Bancroft,    103; 
Started    for,    67,   68,   69,   70,   71;  Braebugten,  358,  377;  Buchanan, 

First    Day     at,     75;     Erected     a  77;  Cannon,  162;  Dallas,  103,  104; 

House  of  Packing  Boxes  at,  76,  Flagler,    154,    161,    168;    Melville, 

79,  83,  84,  85,  104,  110,  117,  152,  38;  Entered,  39,  42,  44,  45;  North 

157,   194,   195,  226,  312,  336,  379,  Star,    46;    Anchored   in,   50,   462; 

437,  442,  443,  447,  451,  456  Olrick's,    59,    63;     Pioneer,    314; 

Antarctic  Exploration,  28  Robertson,  63;  Sontag,  451 

Arctic,  Bradley,  Expedition,  24,  27  Bay  Fiord,  Overland  to,  162,  168 

Arctic  Circle  Crossed,  34  Bear  Hunting,  177,  184,  189,  432 

Armbruster,  Professor  W.  F.,  Defense  Belcher  Point,  Passed,  361,  362 

of  Dr.  Cook  by,  490  Belgian  Antarctic  Expedition,  28,  497 

Armour   of   Chicago,    Food    Supplies  Belle  Isle,  Straits  of,  Entering,  31 

by,  135  Bennett,  James  Gordon,  Cable  to,  464, 
Arthur  Land,  191  465;   Selling   Narrative  Story  to, 

Ashton,  J.  M.,  526,  530  491»  942»  493 

Astrup,    Eivind,    Death    of,    38,    511,  Bernier,  Captain,  448,  516 

515,  560  Berri,  Herbert,  502 

Atholl,  Cape,  Sailed  Around,  46  Berry,  Robert  M.,  478 


INDEX 

"Big  Lead,"  Peary's  Eskimos  Become  78;    Sparbo,    344,   355,    357,    363, 

Panic-Stricken   at,    11;   Dr.   Cook  364,  377,  378,  413,  497;  Tennyson, 

Reaches  the  Shores  of,  217;  Cross-  427,    428,    429;     "Thomas     Hub- 

ing  the,  221,  222,  224,  250  bard,"  201;  Veile,  154,  161;  Vera, 

"Big  Nail,"  85,  243  343,  352,  353;  York,  44,  454,  455 

Blethen,  J.,  527  Cardigan  Strait,  350 

Bonsall  Island,  106  Caribou  Hunting,  109 

Booth  Sound,  453  Chester,  Rear-Admiral,  502,  543,  544 

Borup,  George,  485,  486  Christiansaand,  476 

Bradley,  John  R.,  Compact  Made  for  Clarence,  Cape,  429 

Expedition,    24;    Expedition,    29;  Coast  and  Geodetic   Survey,  488 

Join  Party,  31;  Called  to  Action,  Coburjr  Island    428 

51;  Assumed  Direction,  53;  Shoots  ^  °,    *  ' 

Duck,  54,  537  Cold,  Director,  477 

"Bradley,  John  R.,"  S.  S.,  Sailed  July  Columbus,  Christopher,  7 

3,    1907,    23;    Going    Northward,  Conger,   Fort,   Party  Left  by   Peary 
28;  Aboard  the,  30;  Sailing  Qual-  to   Die  of  Cold   and   Hunger   at, 

ities  of  the,  31  454 

Bradley     Land,     246,     249;     Positive  Congress,  Investigation  of,  Admission 
Proof  of,  251  of  Peary  Witnesses  in,  15,  18,  547 

Braebugten  Bay,  358,  377  Contracts,  Book,  494 

Breton,  Cape,  30  Controversy,  Polar,  5 

Bridgeford,  527  Cook,  Mrs.,  478 

Bridgman,   Herbert   L.,   Kitchen   Ex-  Copenhagen,  12,  15,  244,  465,  466,  476, 
plorer,  13,  77,  78,  502,  529,  557  479»  482>  494(>  49?»  538,  539,  540, 

Bridges,  Thomas,  Yahgan  Dictionary,  549'  55°'  551'  557'  563 

497,  498  Copenhagen,  University  of,  549,  562 

Brooklyn  Dairy  Business,  27  Cornell  University,  485 

Brooke's  Island,  106  Crocker  Land,  226,  490,  559 

Brown,  Belmore,  524  Crown  Prince  Gustav  Sea,  329,  336 

Buchanan  Bay,  77  Crystal  Palace  Glacier,  451 
Bushwick  Club,  481 


Cairn  Point,  Passed,  68  *>*  '' 


Camped  for  the  Winter,  393  , 

Cannon  Ba      162  Danes,  Hospitality  of  the,  515 

Danish  Literary  Expedition,  453,  515 
Cannon  Fiord,  203  JL 

Cape  Alexander,  Passed,  65,  117,  122,  ?™  f  "J  S'  B£ere£  ™ 

152;    Athol,    Sailed    Around!    46;  Ded"ck>    D*»    Harshly    Treated    by 

Auckland,   60;    Breton,  30;   Clar-  ^eaiT>  434,  454,  515 

ence,    429;     Faraday,    429,    430;  De  Gerlache,  134 

Hatherton,     167;     Inglefield,    68;  "Devil's  Thumb,"  456 

Isabella,    428;     Louis    Napoleon,  Dial  shadow,  at  the  Pole,  308 

435;  Paget,  428;  Parry,  59;  Rob-  ~.          T  ,      ,      .    ~.  , 

ertson,     Proceeded     to,     61,     62;  Dlsco>  Island  of>  SlShted'  34 

Rutherford,     159;    Sabine,     Note  Dundas  Island,  337 

Left  at,   149,   150,   154,   157,   158,  Dunkle,    Faked    Observations    of,    15, 

161,  336,  426,  431;   Tragedies  of,  535;  Introduced  to,  536,  537,  538, 

433,  434;   Seiper,   103;   Sheridan,  539,  540,  563 


INDEX 

Dunkle-Loose    Forgery,    Explanation  Nearness  to  Land,  225,  230,  270, 

of,  355  279,  284,  293,  307,  327,  335;  Kills 

a    Walrus,    373;    381;    Secures    a 

PVan    Dr     46  5    469    470    494  Hare,    384;    An    Adept    With    a 

fcgan,  Dr.,  465,  469,  470,  49  Recounts    Re- 

Eggedesrnmde    462;  First  Banquet  in  mar|able    Journey    to    the    Pole, 

Honor  of  Discovery  of  the  Pole  452 

gj  ftj  46?!  466    ,  Eureka  Sound,  Reached,  102,  183,  192 

Eidsbotn,  Descended  to,  343  ' 

T       ,   „_  Explorers'  Club,  529 
Ellef  Ringnes  Land,  329 

Ellesmere    Land,    71;    the    Promised  Faraday,  Cape,  429,  430 

Land,  101,  191,  344  Faroe  IslandSj  464 

Elsinore,  466  Fenker,   Governor,  36 

Endor,  2  Fiala,  Anthony,  478,  536 

Equipment,  Examination  of,  149  Fiord    Umanak?    Reached,    38;    Bay, 

Eric  the  Red,  33  Overland    to,     162,    168;    Snag's, 

"Erik,"  S.  S.,  Peary  Supply  Ship,  443,  193;  Cannon,  203;  Musk  Ox,  343; 

449,  451,  515  Talbot's,  429 

Eskimos,  Delusions  of,  11;  Testimony  Floundering  in  the  Open  Sea,  231 

of,  12,  34;  Married  Life  Among  Flagler  Bay,  Advance  Supplies  Sent 

the,    48;    Tents,    49;    Bargaining,  fotOj  154; '  161j  168 

49;  Study  of  Walrus  Habits,  52;  ^      ,      F;      ,    -p   t       j    fifi 

Customs   Pertaining   to   Children,  Foulke  Flord'  Entered»  6( 

54;      Romance,     55;      Have     No  Fox,  Arctic,  398 

Salutation,  61;  Equality  of  Chil-  Francke,    Rudolph,    25;    Selected    as 

dren  and  Dogs  to  the,  63;  Pros-  Companion   to   Dr.   Cook,   72,   73, 

perity  Measured  by  the  Number  79;  Hunting,  89,  90;  Meat  Gath- 

of  Dogs,  68;  Engaged  in  Request  ered  and  Dried  in  Strips  by,  114; 

of  Reserve  Supplies,  85;  Making  Prepared     a     Feast,     147,     148; 

Clothes,    90;    Gloom    When    the  Asked   to   Join   Party,    153,   155; 

the     Long     Night     Begins,     92;  Remained  in  Charge  of  Supplies 

Mourning     for     the     Dead,     95;  at    Annoatok,    204;    in    Starving 

Dancing,    97;    Joy    in .  Killing    a  Condition     Refused     Bread     and 

Bear,   108;  Christmas  Festivities,  Coffee  by  Peary,  442;  Compelled 

137;  Ice  Cream,  137;  the  Coming  by  Peary  to  Turn  Over  Furs  and 

of  the  Stork  to  the,  142;  Love  for  Ivory,  443,  517 

Children,  145^;  Belief  in^  Shadows,  Franklin  Bay  Expedition,  Lady,  158 

Nansen  Sound,  315,  327 


.  Captured,  100 

Trip   to    Pole,   452;    Hostility   to  Gannett,  Henry,  544 

Peary,    454;     Put     Through     the  "Gates  of  Hades,"  66 

Third  Degree  by  Peary,  488;  Put  Gilder,  Richard  Watson,  112 

?u  -B™-n    Tff7'8    Shlp    AgainSt  Glacier,    Crystal    Palace,    451;    Hum- 
their  Will,  514  boldt?  ^  100>  1Q6}  109;  Petovvik, 

Etah,    13;    Steered    for,   64;   Landing  Sighted    45 

Difficult  at,  69,  70;  Eskimos  Re-  Gloucester    03 

turn  to,  206,  312,  448,  449,  451,  558  *  **'/* 

E-tuk-i-shook,  12;  Told  Bartlett  That  ^J?^!  «£  f^L^ 

Observations     Were     Made,     13;  Godhaven,  Sheltered  in,  36,  3 

Sights    Bears,    183;    Chosen    for  Goggles,     Amber-Colored,     Used     to 
Dash  to  Pole,  196;  293;  Sure  of  Protect  the  Eyes,  226 

BANCROFT 


INDEX 


"Gold  Brick,"  Slurs,  39 

Gore,  Professor,  540,  563 

Gramatan  Inn,  535 

Grand  Republic,  479,  480 

Grant  Land,  191,  212,  214,  215,  226 

Great  Iron  Stone,  513 

Greely    Expedition,    Camp    of,     158; 

Peary    Throws    Discredit    Upon 

the,  433,  515 

Greely,  General  A.  W.,  168,  544,  5GO 
Greely  River,  168 
Greenland,  Steered   for,  31;   Interior, 

32,   37,   45,    62,    69,    79,    117,    3G4, 

408,  433,  436,  489,  497 
Grinnell  Land,  191 
Grinnell  Peninsula,  337,  342 
Grosvenor,  Gilbert,  543,  544 
Gulf,  Inglefield,  46,  59;  Crossing,  60, 

453;     of     St.     Lawrence,     Sailed 

Over,  31 
Gum  Drop  Story,  Explanation  of,  30 

Hague  Tribunal,  The,  441 
Hampton,   Benjamin,   546,  553 
Hampton's  Magazine,  546,  552,  553 
"Hans  Egede,"  S.  S.,  Sailed  on,  464, 

466,  467 

Hansen,  Dr.  Norman,  462 
Hares,  Arctic,  67,  163 
Harry,  T.  Everett,  552,  554 
Hassel   Sound,   329,   334 
Hatherton,  Cape,  67 
Hayes,  Dr.,  66,  222 
Hearst,  W.  R.,  Offer  From,  491 
Hell    Gate,    348;    Drifting    Towards, 

350,  353 
Henson,  Matthew,  Statement  of,  506, 

559 
Holland    House,    Compact    Made    at, 

24 

Holsteinborg,  32 
"Hope,"  S.  S.,  513 
Hovgaard,   Commander,  468,  472 
"Hubbard,  Cape  Thomas,"  201,  489 
Hubbard,  General  Thomas,  528,  558 
Humboldt   Glackr,  45,   100,   106,   109 


Hunting,  Caribou,  109;  Bear,  177, 
184,  189,  432;  Hare,  67,  89,  163; 
Musk  Ox,  171,  184,  378-392;  Nar- 
whal, 87;  Walrus,  54,  64,  367-373; 
In  the  Moonlight,  114-129 


Icarus,  43 

Ice,  Explosion  of,  124 

Iceberg,  Adrift  on  an,  346 

Iceland,  464 

Igloo,  Building  an,  166 

Ik-wa,  the  Cruelty  of,  55,  56,  57 

Inglefield,  Cape,  68 

Inglefield,  Gulf,  46,  59;  Crossing,  60, 
453 

Instruments,  Carried  on  Journey  to 
Pole,  198;  Left  With  Whitney, 
450;  Buried,  499 

Investigation  of  Peary's  So-Called 
Proofs,  544,  545 

Isabella  Cape,  428 

Island,  Bonsall,  106;  Brook's,  106; 
Coburg,  428;  Disco,  34,  50;  Lit- 
tleton, Passing  Inside  of,  67; 
Dundas,  337;  Faroe,  464;  North 
Cornwall,  336;  Saunders,  54; 
Schei,  185;  Shannon,  203;  Shel- 
ton,  478;  Weyprecht,  159 

Itiblu,  Near,  59,  453 

Jensen,     Inspector     Dougaard,     461, 

463,  464,  497 

Jesup,  Mrs.  Morris  K.,  514 
Jones  Sound,  324,  342,  383,  396,  403, 

426 

Kraul,  Governor,  457,  458,  459,  460, 

461,  497 

Kane  Basin,  66,  101 
Kane,  Dr.,  66 
Kanga,  59 
Karnah,  60 
Kennedy  Channel,  66 
King  Christian  Land,  336 
"King's  Guest  House,"  Only  Hotel  in 

Greenland,  462 
"Kite,"  S.  S.,  511 


INDEX 


"Rookaan,  63 

Koo-loo-ting-wah,  Leading  Man,  101, 
105,  108,  109,  184;  Took  Instruc- 
tions  to  Francke,  204;  Paid  by 
Peary  to  Abandon  Supplies,  448 

Ky-un-a,  the  Death  of,  127 

Labrador,  9,  31,  463,  484,  557 
Lancaster  Sound,  192,  336,  342,  425 
Lands-Lokk,  195 
Lerwick,    Sent    First    Cable    to    New 

York  From,  464 
Lonsdale,  477,  494,  537 
Loose,    15;    Faked   Observations,    535, 

537,  538,  539,  540,  563 
Louis  Napoleon,  Cape,  435 
Lifeboat  Cove,  Searched  for  Relics 

Along,  67 
Lincoln  Land,  191 
Lincoln  Sea,  214 
Littleton    Island,    Passing    Inside    of, 

67 

MacDonald,  J.  A.,  Describes  the  Mt. 

McKinley  Ascent,  531,  532,  533 
McLaughlin,  A.  J.,  563 
Ma-nee,  the  Romance  of,  55,  56,  57 
Mann,  Colonel,  13,  529 
Marshal,  Colonel,  527 
Marvin,   Ross,   the   Suspicious    Death 

of,  485;  Letters  Suppressed,  488 
Matin,  Paris,  offer  $50,000,  494 

McMillan,    Makes    False    Statements, 

434 

"Melchior,"  S.  S.,  476 
Melville,  Admiral,  502 

Melville  Bay,  38;  Entered,  39,  42,  44, 
45  455 

Meteorite,  "Star  Stone,"  Stolen  by 
Peary,  435,  454,  512 

Mirror,  St.  Louis,  the  Only  Paper  to 
Grant  Space  to  Uncover  the  Un- 
fair  Methods  of  the  Pro-Peary 
Conspiracy,  490,  491,  492 

Mitchell,  Roscoe,  525,  527 

"Morning,"  S.  S.,  458 

Mountain,  Table,  "Oomanaq,"  46 


Mt.     McKinley,     Affidavit,     13,     14; 

Scaled>    |9'    5f2?    Description    of 

ascent>  531'  535>  541 
Murchison  Sound,  453 

Museum  of  Natural  History,  513 

Musk  Ox  Fiord,  343 

Musk  Ox  Hunting,  171,  184,  387 

My-ah,    Disposes    of   Wives    to    Gain 

Dogs,  48;  Direct  Hunting,  51 
Mylius  Erickson,  133,  453 

JSansen,  introduced  the  Kayak,  133, 

495 
Nansen    Sound,    Through,    164,    193, 

195,  203 

Nansen  Straits,  77 
Narwhal  Hunt,  Description  of,  87 
Naval  Committee,  10 
National  Geographic  Society,   10,   13, 

540,  541,  542,  544,  549,  561,  564 
Needles,     Eskimo,     How     They     are 

Made,  91 
Newfoundland  Boats,  31 

York  Globe,  528 

York  ^^  ^  ^  493j  ^ 

538}  557 

New  York  Times,  Published  Lying 
Document,  15;  Peary's  Questions 
Sent  to,  483,  521,  540,  557,  561, 

New  York  World,  506 

New  York,  University  of,  Graduated 

x 

Nordenskjold,  495 

Nordenskjold,   Expedition,  468 
Nordenekjold    System    Borrowed    by 

North  Cornwall  Island,  336 

North  Devon,  183,  342,  359,  396,  423 

North  Lincoln,  406 

North  Pole,  3,  4,  5,  8,  16,  18,  19,  20, 

21,  24,  30,  74,  155,  284,  287,  310, 

449,  452,  455,  557 
North  Star  Bay,  44,  46;  Anchored  in, 

50,  462 

Norwegian  Bay,  336 
Nuerke,  447,  451,  453 


INDEX 

Observations,  245,  257,  274,  292,  302   Quebec,  553 

Olafsen,  Professor,  472 

Olrik's  Bay,  59,  63  Rassmussen,    Knud,    Lived    Among 

"Oomanaq,"  Table  Mountain,  46  Eskimos,  46;  Heard  Story  From 

Oo_U  Village  of  Visited,  «  453 


"  Yo£  4^k  «*  49T,  49°5  N  re?"7    a"d    Pr°PheSied    DiSC°rd> 

Rensselaer  Harbor,  101 

Paget,  Cape,  428  Rice  Straitj  Through,  158 

Palatine  Hotel,  554  Roberts,  Mr.,  548 

Parker,  Professor  Herschell,  13,  523,  Robertson  Bay,  63 

24  Robertson,  Cape,  Proceed  to,  61,  62 

;  8,TlO    11,  12,  13,  14,  15,  18,  ^  «  ™ 
19,  20,  27,  28,  38,  39,  77,  112,  131,      Robmson  Crusoe     Llfe>  391 

200,  212,  244,  253,  433,  438,  439,  Rocky  Mountains,  33 

440,  441,  443,  444,  447,  448,  451,  Rood,  Henry,  485 

452,  454,  459,  463,  474,  477,  482,  Roosevelt,  Stolen  Tusk  Presented  to, 
483,  484,  485,  487,  490,  491,  492,  443 

493,  496,  499,  500,  501,   502,  505,  „„  ,  .  „  c    c      .OQ     _.     ..     ,    ~ 

506,  507,  508    509    510    511    512  (  ^osevelt/'  _S.  S     438;  Piratical  Ca- 

513,  514,  516,  517,  518,  519,  527,  reer  of  the'  444'  447'  451>  484'  557 

528,  529,  530,  540,  542,  543,  544,  Route  to  the   Pole,  285 

545,  557,  558,  563,  565  Royal  Geographical  Society,  472,  473, 

Peary,  Mrs.,  63  475 

Pennsylvania   R.   R.   Station    (Wash-  Rutherford,  Cape,  159 
ington),    Casual    Examination    of 

Peary's  Instruments  in,  10  Sabine,    Cape,    Notes    Left    at,    149, 

Penny  Strait,  337  150,     154,     157,     158,     161,     336; 

Petowik  Glacier,  45  Tragedies  of,  426,  431,  433,  434, 

Phoenix  Hotel,  Stayed  at,  468 

Pioneer  Bay,  340,  341  ^nders  ^Island'  54 

T,  i       -C1J.U-         A  j      «  XT-  i  ^  Schei  Land,  185 

Polar   Ethics,   Accused   of  Violating, 

439  Schley  Land,  79,  164,  191 

Poe,  Edgar  Allen,  140  Schley,  Rear-Admiral,  168,  544,  584 

"Polaris,"  S.  S.,  Stranded  in  Sinking  SchleF  River'  168 

Condition,  67  Schwartz,  Dr.  Henry,  490 

Pole,  Copy  of  Note  Left  in  Tube  at,  Seattle  Times,  527 

313  Seiper,  Cape,  103 

Pole  Star,  136  Ser-wah-ding-wah,  122,  152 

Politiken,  465,  473  Shackleton's    Journey    to    the    South 
Pond's  Inlet,  425  Pole,  458 

Portland,  560  Shadows  at  the  Pole,  304,  306,  308 

Press,  Injustice  of  the,  19  Shainwald,  Ralph  L.,  469 

Printz,  F.,  525  Shakespeare,  140 

Proofs,    Peary's    Demands    for,    547,  Shelter  Island,  478 

548,  549  Shannon  Island,  203 


INDEX 

Sheridan,  Cape,  78  Svartevoeg,    180;    Camped    South    of, 

Schoubye,   Captain   Henning,   46,  515  *g  194»  195»  201'  206»  247>  287» 

Sledges,  Making  of,  128  Sverdrup,  Captain  Otto,  Exploration 

Smith,  Mrs.,  514  of,  80,  191;  Mapped  Channels  by, 

Smith  Sound,  Entered,  65,  66;  Left,           192,    201,    342;    Peary    Stole    the 

71    104    122    150  Honor  of  the  Naming  of  Svarte- 

Snag's'  Fiord,  193  ™e«  From>  489'  490>  516>  56° 

Sontag,  Astronomer,  Lost  Life,  222  TaMe  Mountai      ..Qomanaq,"  46 

Sontag  Bay,  451  ~ 

Sound,  Booth,  453;  Eureka,  182,  183,  J™"*  ^  , f™ 

192;    Fridtjof   Nansen,   315,   327;  Talbot  s  Fiord,  429 

Hassel,  329,  334,  365;  Jones,  324,  Tassuasak,  Arrived  at,  456 

342,  383,  396,  406,  426 ;  Lancaster,  Temperature  of  the  Body,  324 

192,    336,    425;    Murchison,    453;  Tennyson,  Cape,  427,  428,  429 

Nansen,   Through,   164,   193,    195,  J           „  \r.t_n  .,_    ^o 

203;  Smith,  Entered,  65,  66;  Left,  lent'   lne»     Mete     lte'  5K 

71,    164,    122,    150;    Whale,    En-  Tents,  Eskimo,  49 

tered,  59;  Wolstenholm,  46;  Wai-  Thompsen,  Professor,  461 

rus  Adventure  in,  50,  433.  "Thumb,  The  Devil's,"  39 

Sparbo,  Cape,  344,  355,  357,  363,  364,  Tittman,  O.  H.,  544 

377,  378,  413,  497  Torp>   ProfGSSOrj  472)   549,  560 

Speed  Limits,  Criticized,  502;  Peary's,  Townsend,  Director,  of  the  New  York 

505  Aquarium,    Falsely   Accused    Dr. 

Spitzbergen,  289  Cook    of    Stealing    a    Dictionary 

Squint,  Boreal,  275  Compiled  by  Thomas  Bridges  of 

*  Indian  Words,  497,  498 

435,  454,  5!2  ^08  "^  "*  *  ****  "  **"' 

Stars  and  Stripes  Pinned  to  the  North   Troy,  553 

Pole'  287  Tung-wing-wah,  95 

Stead,  William  T.,  467,  468,  491 

Steinsby,  Professor,  461  Umanak,  449,  461,  462 

St.  Lawrence,  Gulf  of,  31  Umanak  Fiord,  38 

St.  Louis,  Lecture,  496  United  Steamship  Company,  477 

Stockwell,  Professor,  503  Upernavik,     Island,     Appeared,     38, 

Stokes,  Frank  Wilbert,  112  206»  448»  449»  457»  459»  461 

Straits,  Davis,  31;  Belle  Isle,  Enter-  „ 

ing,  31;  Rice,  Through,  158;  Vai-  V  aigat  Straits,  Passed,  38 

gat,  Passed,  38;  Cardigan,  350  Veile,  Cape,  154,  161 

Stromgren,  Professor  Elis,  472,  550  Vera,  Cape,  343,  352,  353 

Stork,  Visits  at  Christmas,  142  Verhoeff,  John  M.,  the  Death  of,  63, 

Supplies,  197;  Taken  for  Journey  to  511'  515 

Pele,  198,  199;  Seized  by  Peary,  Vespucci,  Amerigo,  7 
444 

Sydney,  Harry  Whitney,  Arrives  at,  Wack,  H.  Wellington,  527 

12;  Journey  to,  236,  558,  561  Waldorf-Astoria,     Arrived     at,     481; 

Svarten  Huk,  38  Dinner  Given  at,  504,  535 


INDEX 

Wallace,  Dillon,  536  Weapons,  Making,  381 

Walrus    Hunting,    15,    50,    122,    123,  Weche,  Handelschef,  461 

367-373;    In    the   Moonlight,    114-  ___ 

129  Weed,  General,  527 

Whale  Sound,  Entered,  59  Wellington,  Channel,  336,  340 

Whitney,  Harry,  12;  Instruments  left  Weyprecht  Island,  159 

with,    244,    437;    111    Treated    by  Wolstenholm  Sound,  46,  50,  453 

Peary's    Boatswain   Murphy,   445,  „,__ 

449,  451;  Peary  Refused  Permis-      Worm  Diggers'  Union,"  529 

sion   to    Bring    From    the    North  Wyckoff,  E.  G.,  471 

Instruments    and    Data    Left    in 

His  Hands,  497;  Forced  to  Bury 

Instruments,  499,  558  York,  Cape,  44,  454,  455 

INDEX  OF  NEW  MATERIAL 

Arctic  Club  of  America  (b)  Lyceum  and  Chautauqua  Magazine,  604, 

Balch,  Edwin  Swift,  Article  by,  595-599 

(b)  Mann,  Congressman  James  R.,  Card  to. 

Bates,   R.    C.,   Credits   Mt.    McKinley  ,       604 

ascent,  534  (b)  Mt-  McKinley  Expedition,  534 

Bradley  Land,  597-598  Moore,  Prof.  Willis,  601,  603 

Chautauqua  Managers  Association,  Ar-  North  Pole>  595»  604,  606 

tide  by  (a,  b,  c)  National  Investigation,  Desired  by  Cook, 

Caines,  Ralph  H.,  Credits  Mt.  McKinley  600 

ascent,  534  (b)  National  Geographical  Society,  601,  603. 

Cook-Peary  Controversy,  606,  607,  608  (a) 

Cook  Must  Have  Been  First,  597  Overland  Magazine,   Article  by  R.   H. 

Cook  s  Three  Achievements,  598  Caines,  534 

Carr  Wooda  N.  Letter  to  and  from  606  Official  Evidence  not  Necessarily  Correct. 

Can  Government  Escape  Responsibility,  QQJ 

.     6°5  O'Hara,  Barrett,  609 
Clark,  Champ,  Letter  from,  608 

Pension  Peary,  Old  Age,  602,  603 

Danish  Geographical  Society  (b)  Purple  Snow,  598,  599 

"Discoverer  of  the  Pole,"  Peary  denied  Peary's  Data  proves  Cook's,  596,  597,  599 

title  (a)  Poindexter,  Miles,  Letter  from,  607 

Daniels,  Josephus,  Card  to,  603  Petty  Cliques  in  Washington,  607 

Discoverers  Doubted,  596  Peary-Parker-Brown  Humbug  up  to  date, 

Explorers,  Verdicts  of,  584  534 

_  ,  Parker-Brown  Mt.  McKinley  Expedition, 

Geographic  Societies,  European,  Forced  534 

to  Honor  Peary  (a) 

Greely,  Gen.  A.  W.,  603  (b)  Schley,  Rear  Admiral  W.  S.  (b) 

Glacial  Land,  Discovery  of,  598  Sverdrup,  Capt.  Otto,  603  (b) 

TT  1 1      i-o-i  Sampson-Schley    Controversy,    607 

Hubbard-Bridgeman,  Arctic  Trust,  600  Scientific  Pioneers,  U.  S.  first  rank,  602 

Hoax  the  World,  606  „,  .,  XT   v 

High,  Fred,  Editor  of  Platform,  Article  ^bune,  N.  Y    Article  from,  595 

Kv    fifU    «fK    fiin  Travelers  Called  Liars,  595 

by,  604,  605,  6  Taft>  Wm  R    Telegram  ^  6Q6 

King  of  Belgium  (b)  University    of    Copenhagen,    Conferred 
Kill  Brother  Explorer,  Tried  to,  602  Degree,  Ph.  D.  (a,  b) 

Lecointe,  Prof.  Georges,  603  Wilson,  \Voodrow,  Letter  to,  602 


OTHER  BOOKS  BY  DR.  COOK 

You  have  read  Dr.  Cook's  narrative  of  his  expedition  to  the  North  Pole.  His  other 
books  are  of  equal  interest. 

Through  the  First  Antarctic  Night 

A  narrative  of  the  Belgian  South  Pole  Expedition  of  1897,  in  charge  of  Commander 
de  Gerlache,  with  Dr.  Cook  as  surgeon. 

This  expedition  came  near  sharing  the  fate  of  Captain  Scott  of  the  English  expedition. 
Captain  Roald  Amundsen,  discoverer  of  the  South  Pole,  in  speaking  to  the  Press  of  the 
hardships  which  the  members  of  the  Belgica  expedition  withstood  says:  "During  the 
winter  scurvy  broke  out  and  at  the  same  time  several  of  the  party  showed  signs  of  mental 
trouble.  Dr.  Cook  proved  himself  a  surgeon  equal  to  the  situation.  All  of  his  patients 
recovered.  Here  I  learned  to  know  Dr.  Cook  and  to  appreciate  him  as  one  of  the  ablest, 
most  honest,  most  reliable  men  I  have  ever  met.  Members  of  the  Belgica  expedition  owe 
their  lives  to  Dr.  Cook,  as  it  was  through  his  ingenious  plan  of  sawing  the  channel  through 
the  pack-ice  to  open  water,  thus  releasing  the  ice  locked  ship,  that  saved  the  entire  party 
from  death." 

The  above  is  covered  in  detail  in  similar  words  on  pages  19,  20  23  Volume  One  of  "The 
South  Pole"  a  late  book  by  Captain  Amundsen.  On  page  24  of  the  same  volume  he  says: 

"Upright,  honorable,  capable  and  consciencious  in  the  extreme;  such  is  the  memory  we 
retain  of  Dr.  Frederick  A.  Cook." 

To  the  Top  of  the  Continent 

Exploration  in  Sub-Artie  Alaska.  A  thrilling  account  of  the  first  ascent  of  America's 
highest  mountain — Mount  McKinley. 

Dr.  Cook  has  been  engaged  in  exploration  for  twenty  years — the  best  part  of  his  life — 
all  without  pay.  He  has  furnished  his  own  money  for  most  of  his  expeditions.  He  is  a 
quiet,  unassuming  man  and  has  done  all  of  his  work  with  little  thought  of  personal  gain 
or  honorary  publicity."  Quietly  he  came  forward  and  told  us  that  one  of  the  greatest  exploits 
ever  made  in  mountain  climbing  was  now  accomplished.  It  did  not  occur  to  him  to  beat  a 
drum  or  blow  a  trumpet  to  make  this  known  to  the  world.  The  work  was  accomplished; 
this  was  sufficient  for  him.  Little  was  known  of  the  Mt.  McKinley  trip  until  Peary  brought 
it  up  as  a  side  issue  to  throw  doubt  on  Dr.  Cook's  Polaf  Claim;  see  page  534  of  this  book. 

My  Attainment  of  the  Pole 

Edition  de  Luxe 

Captain  Amundsen  in  speaking  of  Dr.  Cook's  Polar  trip  says:  "It  was  a  pity  that 
Peary  should  besmirch  his  beautiful  work  by  circulating  outrageous  accusations  against 
a  competitor  who  had  WON  THE  BATTLE  in  open-field.  If  Peary  is  to  prove  the  accusa- 
tion by  the  evidence  of  Cook's  two  followers,  I  must  confess  it  is  avery  weak  foundation." 


The  above  books  by  Dr.  Frederick  A.  Cook  have  been  printed  in  edition  de  Luxe, 
especially  for  subscription  purposes.  The  regular  price  is  $5.00  each,  but  to  accommodate 
those  further  interested  in  exploration,  we  have  arranged  to  make  a  special  reduced  price; 
see  next  page. 


The  Polar  Publishing  Co., 
601  Steinway  Hall, 
Chicago,  111. 

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The  Polar  Publishing  Co. 
601  Steinway  Hall, 
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Gentlemen: 


Enclosed  find  three  dollars  ($3.00)  for  which  please  send  me  postpaid,  one  copy  of  "To 
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The  Polar  Publishing  Co., 
601  Steinway  Hall, 
Chicago,  111. 

Gentlemen: 


Enclosed  find  three  dollars  ($3.00)  for  which  please  send  me  postpaid,  one  copy  of 
'My  Attainment  of  the  Pole,"  Edition  de  Luxe,  by  Dr.  Frederick  A.  Cook,  and  oblige 


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